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Background to India’s Koodankulam anti nuclear campaign

Heat rises beyond the smog in India  AMANDA HODGE, SOUTH ASIA CORRESPONDENT : The Australian November 26, 2011 “ “…..The nucleus of the campaign to stop Koodankulam can be found near India’s southern-most tip in the Tamil Nadu fishing village of Idinthakarai, and the man driving it is SP Udayakumar. The articulate idealist with a doctorate in political science says that opposition to the project dates back to the late 1980s, when it was conceived as a symbol of the India-Soviet relationship.

As the project wavered, through the fall of the Soviet Union, prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and the 2004 Asian tsunami, so did the campaign to derail it. Udayakumar says locals had more pressing worries, and were seduced by the prospect of job opportunities. Then came Fukushima.

Three months later, the Indian government did a “hot run” on the Russian-built Koodankulam reactors. The trial caused mass panic and stirred even greater opposition. “More than 35-40 villages have shown solidarity with this protest,” Udayakumar says from the parish priest’s house where he and fellow organisers sleep most nights. Minutes after we sit down to talk, the power goes out. Udayakumar claims prolonged blackouts have occurred with suspicious regularity only since the protest gained momentum in August.

In September, 127 people began a “fast unto death” which ended 12 days later when the state government promised not to switch on the reactors until public safety concerns were allayed. Since, he says, thousands of villagers from across Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states have flocked to Idinthakarai to fast in relay as a symbolic protest. At one such protest this week, a Hindu swami told Inquirer he joined the fast after walking from the central Indian state of Maharashtra.

In some respects it’s astonishing this protest took so long. The 2004 tsunami devastated coastal Tamil Nadu, including Koodankulam, claiming more than 1000 lives and sweeping away homes and livelihoods. The surge licked the top of the 40-metre tall statue of Tamil poet and saint Tiruvalluvar that sits just off the coastal town of Kanyakumari, less than 20km from the Koodankulam facility. India’s nuclear authorities pushed on. They insist the plant, built.7.5m above the ground, is tsunami-proof.

In the wake of Fukushima, the Russian government ordered a safety review into its own nuclear technology, also used at Koodankulam. It concluded almost none of its reactors were capable of withstanding “extreme environmental impact”.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/heat-rises-beyond-the-smog/story-e6frg6z6-1226206437691

November 28, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, India