nuclear-news

Keeping to the script, Modi has just announced a civilian nuclear agreement with Britain.

The pact is largely symbolic. But it’s dangerous.

Spent force

Britain has little to offer India when it comes to nuclear energy. Its nuclear industry is facing a terminal crisis. The two power plants planned in Hinkley Point have been plagued by escalating costs, forcing the investors to abandon the project, as well as serious design risks.

Britain’s new nuclear plants in Hinkley Point are plagued by escalating costs, serious design risks

The World Nuclear Industry Report, 2015 concludes that Britain’s nuclear industry has been decisively overtaken by the renewable energy sector, for a variety of reasons, including the increasingly adverse economics of nuclear energy and growing competitiveness and efficiency of renewable energy sources.

Indeed, Cameron’s nuclear deal with China last month has come undersevere criticism for being a desperate, expensive and dangerous move.

So, for India, the deal with the UK is little more than a symbolic prize.

In the post-Fukushima world, India is one of the few nations on a nuclear shopping spree. Not because it’s following some rational and openly debated energy policy but because the deals imply recognition of the country’s status as a nuclear weaponsstate……..

Unclean motive

The joint statement issued on 13 November by Modi and David Cameron emphatically describes the deal as a symbol of “mutual trust and our resolve to combat climate change”.

It thus peddles the global nuclear industry’s myth of nuclear energy being clean and a solution to climate change………

Modi’s zeal to declare nuclear energy as climate-friendly strengths the myth which the world can accept at its own peril.

In India, local communities and activists are protesting against nuclear plants being set up on their land. They have raised a wide array of issues – damage to livelihoods and the environment, inherently unsafe nature of nuclear energy, its adverse economics and undesirability for India’s energy future, shoddy safety regulations, an unaccountable nuclear industry.

Add to this the global shift away from nuclear power post Fukushima that India stands to miss due to its nuclear obsession.

Since coming to power, the Modi government has only furthered the UPA’s dangerous and anachronistic nuclear policy.

On nuclear liability, fresh environmental assessment of Jaitapur and other projects hurriedly pushed by the UPA, and accounting for concerns of the local people. http://www.catchnews.com/environment-news/modi-s-nuclear-deal-with-britain-is-hollow-but-quite-toxic-1447527999.html