nuclear-news

New! – Australia -Gillard ready to discuss Indian nuclear exports despite fears over safety

By Ben Doherty

Oct. 15, 2012, 2:30 a.m.

Fron Borderwatch

DELHI: India’s nuclear industry, Australia’s newest prospective uranium customer, has been slammed by the country’s own auditor as dangerously unsafe, disorganised and, in many cases, completely unregulated.

The two countries will soon begin negotiations on a safeguards deal to allow Australian uranium to be sold to India, after the Labor Party last year dropped its long-standing opposition to trading with countries outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Before Ms Gillard’s arrival in Delhi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bob Carr, said Australia’s relationship with India was ”in good working order” and that progress was being made towards a safeguards agreement so that Australian yellowcake could be sold to India.

”The Indians are happy with the progress on this,” he said. ”We always, where there is the sale of Australian uranium, we always have a treaty that governs it and puts in place all the safeguards we require.”

While Indian media have reported Australia and India are poised to sign a uranium safeguards agreement during Ms Gillard’s visit, the Herald understands any deal is several months from being finalised.

Australia holds the world’s largest uranium reserves and exports more than 7000 tonnes every year, including to China. The government’s refusal to sell to India is a source of continuing friction between the two countries.

India is estimated to have between 80 and 100 nuclear weapons, but refuses to sign the treaty, arguing it discriminates against emerging nations and that it needs its nuclear weapons as a bulwark against nuclear-armed Pakistan.

India’s last nuclear weapons test was in 1998, but its civilian nuclear industry is growing rapidly, with the number of operating nuclear plants expected to rise from 20 to more than 60 over the next decade.

However, the Indian comptroller and auditor-general, Vinod Rai, has found the body that oversees nuclear safety in India, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, is ineffective, mired in bureaucracy and negligent in monitoring safety.

Mr Rai’s report detailed a staggering list of failures:

Sixty per cent of regulatory inspection reports for operating nuclear power plants in India were either delayed, up to 153 days late, or not undertaken at all.

For power plants under construction, the number of regulatory inspections delayed or not done was 66 per cent.

Smaller radiation facilities operate across the country with no licences and no oversight at all.

Of India’s 12 research facilities, only one had a licence, the report found, while of 436 industrial radiography units, only 110 had a valid current licence.

In many cases there are no rules for nuclear operators to follow. Despite an order from the government in 1983, the board has still not developed an overarching nuclear and radiation safety policy for India.

Even when laws do exist and are broken, the existing legislation gives the board almost no punitive power at all.

In some cases, the fines for nuclear safety transgressions are as low as Rupees500 – less than $10.

India has had nuclear scares already. In 2010, a gamma irradiation machine containing cobalt-60 was sold off by Delhi University for scrap. Pulled apart, it unleashed a massive dose of radiation, killing one person and putting another six in hospital.The Indian government has legislation before parliament to replace the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board with a new regulator, the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority.

But critics say it will be even weaker than the current body.

The board’s former chair A. Gopalakrishnan said the new body would compromise safety further by giving the government control of inspections.

The Delhi Science Forum’s Prabir Purkayastha said: ”It is a very weak piece of legislation that makes the regulator subservient to a group of ministers. It is a weakening of the current regulation.”

http://www.borderwatch.com.au/story/396914/gillard-ready-to-discuss-indian-nuclear-exports-despite-fears-over-safety/?cs=5

October 14, 2012 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized