Nuclear Devices, Tunnels, Canals, Fission or Fusion, Waste, Disasters

 

Nuclear Devices, Tunnels, Canals, Fission or Fusion, Waste, Disasters

It was some day in May, 1974, we, students of engineering staying in hostels, were busy preparing for our end-semester examinations in our study cocoons, each to their own. There was a sudden uproar in the corridors. We popped out to see what excited our classmates so much. It was nothing big.

Earlier that day India had detonated its first nuclear device, an atomic bomb, of perhaps Lilliputian size. We heard it from BBC Overseas Service. We really could not care, as we were bringing up the rear, after the US, UK, USSR, France, and China, not necessarily in that order. More importantly, we were ready to go home after slogging through sixteen weeks of academic torture.

When we returned after the summer break, the talking heads in the hostel were butting heads about the nuclear test: good or bad, good use or waste of money, did we do that merely to scare Pakistan, have we really arrived on the global nuclear stage, how would China assess the value of the test for India, and so on. I clearly remember that the government controlled news media (AIR and DD) projected the test as much required and trumpeted how such a capability would come to accelerate India’s path on the development curve.

A year later, the grouping the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) banned export of fuel and technology to India. No worry, said the Indian scientists, we have abundant Thorium, another radioactive material that will do.

We will blast tunnels for laying railway lines and shorten distances across the continental size nation through a series of micro-nuclear devices, will do something similar for roads also, and what about canals to transfer water from basin to basin – all done at the push of a button. Nuclear energy is cheap and safe. No need to worry about nuclear waste disposal. We have a long sea shore, after all. I fell for it, the blinkers-on technocrat that I was becoming.

Now it is nearly 51 years since. What have been the civilian uses of nuclear explosions in India that I was gung-ho about? Zero. The test was named Pokhran 1, after a second test was conducted, Pokhran 2, so unimaginative. Pokhran 2 was more than two–a cluster of four fission tests and one fusion test, the hydrogen bomb; the hydrogen bomb claim was disputed by the US. In 1998, when Pokhran 2 came about, Prime Minister Vajpayee was in the lead, I was no longer the babe in the woods that I was in 1974. Unfortunately, I did not find the middle way and I became a know-it-all in my mind and in the minds of most others who have known me.

Enough about me and I return to the nuclear tests. I saw that in more than twenty years, nuclear energy contribution to our energy requirement was minuscule, 3% in 1998. The much touted Fast Breeder Reactor was developing slowly; I wonder why the name had not been changed to Slow Breeder Reactor!

Check that. I know, no matter how slowly the technology is developed, it would remain a Fast Breeder Reactor, meaning something else entirely, like how fast neutrons move within the core. About Thorium mining, I had no idea, and I would leave it at that.

We have to import nuclear power technology from the huge multinational commercial players, and that is not an easy job. One of the main reasons is that the promoters seek complete indemnity. This is par for the course, he who has the technology calls the shot.

In the middle of all this, nuclear power lost its sheen, as no one was ready to adopt the orphan–the issue of nuclear waste disposal, and a few other wake-up calls, like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi disasters.

And, fusion technology has been on the horizon for more than three decades, from more than three decades till now.

No wonder, no tunnels have been bored (?) using nuclear blasts, no cuts in highways have been executed using nuclear blasts, the power generated through nuclear fission–fast breeder or not–has not nudged in percentage terms, no nuclear power company wants to absorb in its balance sheet the risks associated with nuclear power generation, no one has figured out how to dispose of the spent fuel from nuclear reactors, and other issues I am not aware of.

So, now I am not babe in the woods but a know-it-all. Things have not changed just as in harnessing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Mere words.

Raghuram Ekambaram