nuclear-news

Chandigarh, Oct 8 (IANS) To allay fears of farmers in Haryana’s Fatehabad district about a proposed nuclear plant, a group of 40 farmers of Gorakhpur village left for Narora Atomic Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh Monday.

While flagging off the trip, additional deputy commissioner, Fatehabad, Rajiv Ratan said that the farmers will be informed about the benefits of the nuclear plant in their district.

Officers of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), Haryana Police, revenue and other departments accompanied the delegation of farmers.

Ratan said that farmers of Gorakhpur, Kajalheri and Badopal had provided land for the nuclear power plant planned for Fatehabad district, 300 km from Chandigarh.

Ratan said that the farmers had wanted to see how a nuclear plant operates.

“NPCIL organised the farmers’ visit. Farmers would also share their views with scientists and technical experts at the atomic power plant. They would also meet locals who had to migrate due to the setting up of the Narora nuclear power plant. They would also observe the development in the nearby areas,” Ratan added.

http://www.zimbio.com/Govt+Jobs+in+India/articles/CHIKVs13xh0/Haryana+farmers+visit+Narora+nuclear+plant

March 1993 Two blades of the turbine in NAPS Unit I break off, slicing through other blades and indirectly causing a raging fire, which catches onto leaked oil and spreads through the turbine building.  The smoke sensors fail to detect the fire, which is only noticed once workers see the flames.  It causes a blackout in the plant, including the shutdown of the secondary cooling systems, and power is not restored for seventeen hours.  In the meantime, operators have to manually activate the primary shutdown system.  They also climb onto the roof to open valves to slow the reactions in the core by hand (16).  The incident was rated as a Level 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, INES.

Accidents at nuclear power plants in India

Below is a list of leaks, fires and structural damages that have occurred in India’s civilian nuclear power sector.  Numerous other examples of oil leaks, hydrogen leaks, fires and high bearing vibrations have often shut plants, and sometimes not (1).

As the Department of Atomic Energy is not obliged to reveal details of ongoings at these plants to the public, there may be many other accidents that we do not know about.

April 2011 Fire alarms blare in the control room of the Kaiga Generating Station in Karnataka.  Comments by officials alternately say there was no fire, that there was only smoke and no fire, and that the fire was not in a sensitive area (2).  Details from the AERB are awaited. 

November 2009 Fifty-five employees consume radioactive material after tritiated water finds its way into the drinking water cooler in Kaiga Generating Station. The NPCIL attributes the incident to “an insider’s mischief” (3).

April 2003 Six tonnes leak of heavy water at reactor II of the Narora Atomic  Power Station (NAPS) in Uttar Pradesh (4), indicating safety measures have not been improved from the leak at the same reactor three years previously.

January 2003 Failure of a valve in the Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant in Tamil Nadu results in the release of high-level waste, exposing six workers to high doses of radiation (5). The leaking area of the plant had no radiation monitors or mechanisms to detect valve failure, which may have prevented the employees’ exposure. A safety committee had previously recommended that the plant be shut down.  The management blames the “over enthusiasm” of the workers (6).

May 2002 Tritiated water leaks from a downgraded heavy water storage tank at the tank farm of Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) 1&2 into a common dyke area.  An estimated 22.2 Curies of radioactivity is released into the environment (7).

November 2001 A leak of 1.4 tonnes of heavy water at the NAPS I reactor, resulting in one worker receiving an internal radiation dose of 18.49 mSv (8).

April 2000 Leak of about seven tonnes of heavy water from the moderator system at NAPS Unit II. Various workers involved in the clean-up received ‘significant uptakes of tritium’, although only one had a radiation dose over the recommended annual limit (9). 

March 1999 Somewhere between four and fourteen tonnes (10) of heavy water leaks from the pipes at Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, during a test process. The pipes have a history of cracks and vibration problems (11) . Forty-two people are reportedly involved in mopping up the radioactive liquid (12).

May 1994 The inner surface of the containment dome of Unit I of Kaiga Generating Station collapses (delaminates) while the plant is under construction. Approximately 130 tonnes of concrete fall from a height of nearly thirty metres (13), injuring fourteen workers. The dome had already been completed (14), forming the part of the reactor designed to prevent escape of radioactive material into the environment in the case of an accident.  Fortunately, the core had not then been loaded.

February 1994 Helium gas and heavy water leak in Unit 1 of RAPS.  The plant is shut down until March 1997 (15).

March 1993 Two blades of the turbine in NAPS Unit I break off, slicing through other blades and indirectly causing a raging fire, which catches onto leaked oil and spreads through the turbine building.  The smoke sensors fail to detect the fire, which is only noticed once workers see the flames.  It causes a blackout in the plant, including the shutdown of the secondary cooling systems, and power is not restored for seventeen hours.  In the meantime, operators have to manually activate the primary shutdown system.  They also climb onto the roof to open valves to slow the reactions in the core by hand (16).  The incident was rated as a Level 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, INES.

May 1992 Tube leak causes a radioactive release of 12 Curies of radioactivity from Tarapur Atomic Power Station (17).

January 1992 Four tons of heavy water spilt at RAPS (17).

December 1991 A leak from pipelines in the vicinity of CIRUS and Dhruva research reactors at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay, Maharashtra, results in severe Cs-137 soil contamination of thousands of times the acceptable limit. Local vegetation was also found to be contaminated, though contract workers digging to the leaking pipeline were reportedly not tested for radiation exposure, despite the evidence of their high dose (18).

July 1991 A contracted labourer mistakenly paints the walls of RAPS with heavy water before applying a coat of whitewash. He also washed his paintbrush, face and hands in the deuterated and tritiated water, and has not been traced since (19).

March 1991 Heavy water leak at MAPS takes four days to clean up (20).

http://www.greenpeace.org/india/en/What-We-Do/Nuclear-Unsafe/Safety/Nuclear-accidents/Nuclear-accidents-in-India/Accidents-at-nuclear-power-plants/