Nuclear Plant. Is it true?

by Kayalvizhi Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:37 pm

Is it true that Russia/USSR did not build any nuclear plant in Russia after 1987?

Then why is it building one in TN? (Kundangkulam)

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Fri Feb 08, 2013 11:16 pm

Kayalvizhi wrote:Is it true that Russia/USSR did not build any nuclear plant in Russia after 1987?

Then why is it building one in TN? (Kundangkulam)

Hint:

Ruskies have (one of the very) largest oil reserves and can burn away - with dwindling population. Their Nuke poewr plants are mostly in Russia and when Soviet Union split up their populatiojn came down from 300 mil to some 155 million. with mostly the same generating capacity.

India has only one thing more than the Ruskies - power cuts.

Not that I expect you to understand...so let me give you a reason you can understand.

Hindians want to kill all Tamilians and asked Ruskies to build Nuke plants in TN.

by truthbetold Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:42 am

what is the importance of 1987? is that chernobyl accident year?

by goodcitizn Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:45 am

Kayalvizhi wrote:Is it true that Russia/USSR did not build any nuclear plant in Russia after 1987?

Then why is it building one in TN? (Kundangkulam)

NOT TRUE!

Between the 1986 Chernobyl accident and mid 1990s, only one nuclear power station was commissioned in Russia, the 4-unit Balakovo, with unit 3 being added to Smolensk. Economic reforms following the collapse of the Soviet Union meant an acute shortage of funds for nuclear developments, and a number of projects were stalled. But by the late 1990s exports of reactors to Iran, China and India were negotiated and Russia's stalled domestic construction program was revived as far as funds allowed.

Around 2000 nuclear construction revived and Rostov-1 (also known as Volgodonsk-1), the first of the delayed units, started up in 2001, joining 21 GWe already on the grid. This greatly boosted morale in the Russian nuclear industry. It was followed by Kalinin-3 in 2004, Rostov-2 in 2010 and Kalinin 4 in 2011.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.html

Russia has the youngest nuclear reactors in the world, with an average age of 19 years, compared with 26 in western Europe and 30 in the United States, according to Bloomberg. The Fukushima reactor is 38 years old, making it one of the oldest reactors in the world still in operation.

Nuclear industry watchers noted that the emerging markets were keenest to buy into the field.

“Until now, countries in emerging markets were well out in front of the nuclear industry revival, accounting for a disproportionate share of the expected growth in nuclear energy use,” said Sergei Bubnov, who heads Renaissance Asset Managers’ utilities fund. “Out of the 62 reactors currently under construction, 48 – or 77pc of the total – are being built in China, Russia, India and South Korea.”

Among the emerging markets, Russia is the most reliant on nuclear power. Sixteen per cent of its power comes from nuclear energy and it is planning to double nuclear capacity in the next 20 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/business/8429048/Russia-to-keep-building-nuclear-plants-despite-Fukushima.html

by truthbetold Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:56 am

gc,

you hurt kayal. she was hoping for a scenario where cruel hindians foster incompetent russians on her beloved tamil people. now you reduced it to mere power generation economics. what a spoil sport!!

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Sat Feb 09, 2013 2:52 am

goodcitizn wrote:
Kayalvizhi wrote:Is it true that Russia/USSR did not build any nuclear plant in Russia after 1987?

Then why is it building one in TN? (Kundangkulam)

NOT TRUE!

Between the 1986 Chernobyl accident and mid 1990s, only one nuclear power station was commissioned in Russia, the 4-unit Balakovo, with unit 3 being added to Smolensk. Economic reforms following the collapse of the Soviet Union meant an acute shortage of funds for nuclear developments, and a number of projects were stalled. But by the late 1990s exports of reactors to Iran, China and India were negotiated and Russia's stalled domestic construction program was revived as far as funds allowed.

Around 2000 nuclear construction revived and Rostov-1 (also known as Volgodonsk-1), the first of the delayed units, started up in 2001, joining 21 GWe already on the grid. This greatly boosted morale in the Russian nuclear industry. It was followed by Kalinin-3 in 2004, Rostov-2 in 2010 and Kalinin 4 in 2011.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.html

Russia has the youngest nuclear reactors in the world, with an average age of 19 years, compared with 26 in western Europe and 30 in the United States, according to Bloomberg. The Fukushima reactor is 38 years old, making it one of the oldest reactors in the world still in operation.

Nuclear industry watchers noted that the emerging markets were keenest to buy into the field.

“Until now, countries in emerging markets were well out in front of the nuclear industry revival, accounting for a disproportionate share of the expected growth in nuclear energy use,” said Sergei Bubnov, who heads Renaissance Asset Managers’ utilities fund. “Out of the 62 reactors currently under construction, 48 – or 77pc of the total – are being built in China, Russia, India and South Korea.”

Among the emerging markets, Russia is the most reliant on nuclear power. Sixteen per cent of its power comes from nuclear energy and it is planning to double nuclear capacity in the next 20 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/business/8429048/Russia-to-keep-building-nuclear-plants-despite-Fukushima.html

Let me tell you something about this place - new boy!

You never cite evidence against KV - KV does not like it and will become silent (JM style).

and

You never ever cite any evidence against Rashmun Sir ji...and he will forever and ever keep recycling his old (and mostly irrelevant posts) against you until you become silent...thus letting Sir ji claim victory for having the last post with a DOT.

by goodcitizn Sat Feb 09, 2013 3:13 am

TBT: Good to see you here. Long time!

I hope that KV just doesn't buy into the rhetoric fostered by the naysayers of Kudankulam power plant project.

Udayakumar, head of People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), has 210 FIR's filed against him who follows the style of LTTE leader Prabhakaran by surrounding himself with women and children in fighting for his cause. His 13-point objections (questions) have already been addressed and answered. Yet his scaremongering tactics with the uneducated locals continue.

One great answer to his allegations came from a reader as follows:

"USA has 104 such plants, France has 58, Japan has 51, China now constructing 27. I undertand India has enormous freedom where small group of people can stop the good of the entire nation. These thirteen questions are genuine yet answered clearly. You can wake up one who is sleeping, but who can wake up one who acts sleeping? Millions of people from that surrounding have already moved from there into the cities of india, since there is no scope for survival in that area. The fears of Tsunami in that area are meaningless since all the structures lie over 7 meters above sea level. Even if such high waves arise, several villages up to Valliyoor would be washed out by Tsunami itself. You won't need a nuclear plant to destroy them. The kalpakkam atomic plant, low lying compared to this, did not suffer any damage due to Tsunami. Japan has not stopped functioning the other 50 plants even after the disaster. Stop propogating this nonsense, allow the advancement of the nation."

Here's an excellent article in the Hindu by Rahul Siddharthan from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai:

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-real-questions-from-kudankulam/article3893610.ece

"In an atmosphere of mistrust of the government, only an independent safety regulatory mechanism can counter the scaremongering against civilian nuclear power.

I work at an institution funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (which, however, does no nuclear research: the DAE funds a wide variety of institutions and areas in science). About a year ago, I had an e-mail from a journalist who wondered why scientists (including colleagues at my institution), who were so outspoken in their opposition to nuclear weapons, were silent about nuclear power. I suggested that perhaps most scientists are not opposed to civilian nuclear power. India’s scientific academies may prefer to be silent on most issues of importance, but individual Indian scientists are an outspoken lot — they have contributed to the public debate on a variety of issues, ranging from nuclear weapons in the late 1990s to genetically modified crops more recently. If there were a genuine debate to be had on the safety or desirability of nuclear power, I would expect Indian scientists to actively participate in it.

Concrete, not abstract

And in fact there is a genuine debate to be had, but it is not an abstract debate about the safety or desirability of nuclear power. It is a concrete debate about the mechanisms for ensuring safety and transparency. Unfortunately, in all the noise about Kudankulam, this issue has received comparatively little attention in the media.

Since the Fukushima earthquake, worries about nuclear power have been widespread around the world. One person whose mind was changed was the environmental activist George Monbiot: writing in the British newspaper The Guardian on March 21, 2011, he declared: “As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.” His reason was that despite the magnitude of the disaster, the age of the plant, and the inadequate safety features, which led to a meltdown, nobody, as far as we know, had yet received a lethal dose of radiation. This convinced him that well-maintained plants built to modern safety standards pose little threat to the public. Meanwhile, we are facing unprecedented demands for energy, and global warming, driven by accelerating use of fossil fuels and resulting in rising sea levels and extreme weather, presents the biggest environmental threat to the world — especially, one should note, to poor coastal fishing communities such as the one at Kudankulam.

A little before Monbiot’s article, Randall Munroe, creator of the XKCD web comic, published a comparison of various forms of ionising radiation, measured in microsieverts, drawn from public sources (see http://xkcd.com/radiation). This widely circulated chart (also cited by Monbiot) suggested that the annual radiation exposure from living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant is about the same as that from eating a single banana (each being 0.1 microsieverts); the extra dose that Tokyo residents received following Fukushima (about 40 microsieverts) was about a tenth of the yearly dose from natural radioactive potassium in the body (about 390 microsieverts); and the maximum external dose from the Three Mile Island accident (about 1,000 microsieverts) is about a quarter of the normal yearly background dose (4,000 microsieverts, of which about 85 per cent is from natural sources and most of the rest from medical scans).

This is not to minimise the effects of disasters when they do occur. The radiation dose from spending one hour in Chernobyl, in 2010, is much more than the normal yearly “background” dose, and more than the maximum monthly dose permitted for radiation workers in the United States. We need to prevent a Chernobyl-type disaster from ever happening again, anywhere in the world. To quote Monbiot again: “I’m not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.”

When an activist asked me last year whether I would feel safe living near a nuclear plant, I responded that I would consider living in Kalpakkam or Kudankulam much safer and healthier than living in Chennai (or any other Indian metro). She was taken aback, but responded that, nevertheless, the villagers do not feel that way, and we city people should not speak for the villagers.

Unfortunately, this has been the quality of the public debate on Kudankulam so far (and on other contentious nuclear projects like Jaitapur). Perceptions on safety matter more than facts. This is not totally a bad thing: public worry over nuclear power, especially since Chernobyl, has probably contributed to its extraordinary safety – just as the perceived dangers of air travel have made it by far the safest form of travel.

India, and Tamil Nadu in particular, faces a severe shortfall of energy. The environmental and societal damage from hydroelectric power is now well-known. Power plants running on fossil fuels, especially coal (the dominant fuel in India), cause incalculably more damage — including in ionising radiation — than nuclear power. Wind power is promising but, when implemented on a large scale, has its own environmental concerns, particularly to migratory birds. Solar panels are expensive, inefficient, and depend on rare earth elements, the mining of which, again, causes environmental damage. Monbiot’s decision to support nuclear energy is not surprising. What is surprising is the reluctance of other environmentalists to do the same.

To support civilian nuclear power with safeguards, in the abstract, is not the same as to support a particular power project. There may be valid safety or environmental concerns about a particular power project. There may be concerns about resettlement and rehabilitation of displaced people. The DAE needs to work out how to address these concerns in order to prevent similar problems with upcoming power projects. But it cannot do that on its own. We need independent oversight.

Civilian and military use

Unfortunately, for most of its history in India, civilian nuclear power has been deeply intertwined with the nuclear weapons project. As a result, the atomic energy establishment and the government have opposed any kind of external scrutiny of their projects. That has been changing in recent years. In 2005, India undertook, in an agreement with the U.S., to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and to place the former under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. The safeguards agreement was signed with the IAEA in 2009. However, these safeguards are mainly concerned with proliferation of nuclear materials, not with the safety of the plant itself.

The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) is the main organisation concerned with nuclear safety in India. The AERB was severely criticised by the Comptroller and Auditor General in August this year on numerous grounds, including not preparing a nuclear safety policy despite having had a mandate to do so since 1983; failing to prepare 27 of 168 safety documents; not having a detailed inventory of all radiation sources; and failure to adopt international practices. Currently a bill is pending to replace the AERB with a Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA). In December 5, 2011, in an article in DNA (Mumbai), former AERB chairman A. Gopalakrishnan argued forcefully for an independent regulatory mechanism along the lines of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) in France, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the U.S., and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). All these organisations, though appointed by the government, are independent, free of political and corporate influence, transparent, and communicate regularly with the public. Dr. Gopalakrishnan fears that the NSRA, as proposed, will be subject to government pressure and manipulation.

No trust

Intertwined with distrust of the DAE is a larger distrust of the Indian government. Given our inability to maintain the railways, highways, postal department, and other necessary infrastructure in good working order, why should our government be trusted to maintain nuclear plants? It is a good question and deserves a good answer. The DAE may be an excellent organisation, but it must be seen to be excellent, and only openness and external scrutiny will provide that. The NSRA bill deserves much greater media attention and debate than it has received so far.

Unfortunately, this much-needed debate does not appear to be occurring: the activists, with their maximalist demand for stopping all nuclear power projects, not only discredit themselves, but let the government off the hook. The Indian public is aware of the power crisis and is not inclined to oppose nuclear power. The largest political parties in Tamil Nadu, too, have proven reluctant to back the anti-nuclear protests. The media have largely failed to ask the right questions. As a result, there is no pressure on the government, or on the DAE, to ensure transparency or to institute a genuinely independent regulatory body along the lines of proven international examples.

Meanwhile, the protesting locals at Kudankulam, who have now reportedly been persuaded to enter the sea in a “jal satyagraha,” seem to be victims only of unfounded scaremongering. All sympathies to them; but my sympathies, at least, don’t extend to the educated purveyors of motivated misinformation who, in a world of real and imminent global threats, are asking the villagers to act against their own best interests.

by truthbetold Sat Feb 09, 2013 10:10 am

Gc,
Thanks for posting a well thought and well reasoned article on nuclear safety. Part of democratic govt role is to deal with unreasonable situations that arise with freedom. That requires years of earned goodwill. The politicos do not have that. It is contrary to their self interest of amassing wealth and bribing to retain power.
It is at these events in history one should read and review gandhi. He understood india and its people and lived a lifestyle that won him that enormous goodwill. His ideas on specific issues could be challenged but his way of living like the commoner is profoundly powerful. Let us hope that india can resolve this problem and clear the commercial issues with us firms to speed up n power generation..

by Kayalvizhi Sat Feb 09, 2013 10:11 pm

truthbetold wrote:gc,

you hurt kayal. she was hoping for a scenario where cruel hindians foster incompetent russians on her beloved tamil people. now you reduced it to mere power generation economics. what a spoil sport!!

I did not express here any opinion pro or con aboutKundangkulam nulear plant. I wanted to fact check Russian nuclear program after 1987. GC PROVIDED GOOD INFORMAtion.

You are talkiing nonsense. Be more prodctive in the forum.

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Sat Feb 09, 2013 11:37 pm

Kayalvizhi wrote:
truthbetold wrote:gc,

you hurt kayal. she was hoping for a scenario where cruel hindians foster incompetent russians on her beloved tamil people. now you reduced it to mere power generation economics. what a spoil sport!!

I did not express here any opinion pro or con aboutKundangkulam nulear plant. I wanted to fact check Russian nuclear program after 1987. GC PROVIDED GOOD INFORMAtion.

You are talkiing nonsense. Be more prodctive in the forum.

Oh phuleese...dont test our intelligence. ALL your posts - repeat ALL - have only one opinion whether you state it openly or not.

Hindians are out to control and kill Tamilians in every which way they can.

Just read your original post in this thread.

by Kris Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:21 am

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:
Kayalvizhi wrote:
truthbetold wrote:gc,

you hurt kayal. she was hoping for a scenario where cruel hindians foster incompetent russians on her beloved tamil people. now you reduced it to mere power generation economics. what a spoil sport!!

I did not express here any opinion pro or con aboutKundangkulam nulear plant. I wanted to fact check Russian nuclear program after 1987. GC PROVIDED GOOD INFORMAtion.

You are talkiing nonsense. Be more prodctive in the forum.

Oh phuleese...dont test our intelligence. ALL your posts - repeat ALL - have only one opinion whether you state it openly or not.

Hindians are out to control and kill Tamilians in every which way they can.

Just read your original post in this thread.

>>>> Did you know the captain himself may have been a hindian. Yep, word on the street ...

by Idéfix Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:47 am

Kris wrote:
Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:
Kayalvizhi wrote:
truthbetold wrote:gc,

you hurt kayal. she was hoping for a scenario where cruel hindians foster incompetent russians on her beloved tamil people. now you reduced it to mere power generation economics. what a spoil sport!!

I did not express here any opinion pro or con aboutKundangkulam nulear plant. I wanted to fact check Russian nuclear program after 1987. GC PROVIDED GOOD INFORMAtion.

You are talkiing nonsense. Be more prodctive in the forum.

Oh phuleese...dont test our intelligence. ALL your posts - repeat ALL - have only one opinion whether you state it openly or not.

Hindians are out to control and kill Tamilians in every which way they can.

Just read your original post in this thread.

>>>> Did you know the captain himself may have been a hindian. Yep, word on the street ...

What??? I am devastated.

by Idéfix Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:54 am

In addition to the stuff GC has already posted, here is other relevant information from an American source:

Russia holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second-largest coal reserves, and the ninth-largest crude oil reserves.
Russia was the largest producer of crude oil in 2011. During the year, crude oil production averaged about 9.8 million bbl/d.

http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=RS&trk=m

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