After Singur and Nandigram, the West Bengal government has opened another Pandora’s Box with a proposal to build a giant nuclear power station, India’s largest atomic plant, at Haripur in East Medinipur district. The project is a Central government initiative. But it enjoys considerable support from the state’s Left Front government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-CPM).

The public knows very little about the Haripur project except that it’s likely to consist of six reactors of 1,690 megawatts each, a size three times bigger than the largest reactor the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has ever built (540 MW). Together, they will generate 10,000 MW in a single location—contrasting sharply with India’s current nuclear capacity of 3,900 MW spread over 6 sites.

Yet, such is the opacity surrounding Haripur that the project hasn’t even been discussed in the state Cabinet. There is no clarity about which agency will build it and with what resources. Opacity is itself a strong enough reason to question the Haripur project. But as we see below, even stronger ecological, economic, social and political arguments exist for scrapping it altogether at today’s early stage.

The Left Front in Bengal should seize the initiative to do so for the same reasons that Kerala’s Left parties in the 1990s opposed a nuclear power plant at Peringom in Kannur district—namely, that nuclear power stations must not be built in a densely populated region. Deltaic Bengal is even more densely inhabited than Kerala. Haripur is in a cyclone-prone area. This further strengthens the argument.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has coined a new slogan, “Agriculture – our foundation; Industry – our future”. This is painted all over Kolkata. This suggests that large-scale industry alone can develop Bengal, generate jobs and raise incomes across-the-board.

Mr Bhattacharjee is backing Haripur on the assumption that the key to Bengal’s industrialisation lies in nuclear power, an abundant, safe, environmental benign and economically competitive energy source, which is rapidly growing the world over, and emerging as a solution to the grave problem of global warming caused by fossil-fuel burning.

This assumption is comprehensively wrong. It’s mired in naïve, outdated but techno-romantic “Atoms for Peace” thinking of the early 1950s. Despite huge subsidies by the state, nuclear power has betrayed its early promise and turned out unaffordably expensive, difficult to manage, unacceptably unsafe, accident-prone, and environmentally unsound.

Currently, the fixed capital costs of nuclear power stations in most countries are 50 to 70 percent higher than those of coal- and oil-fired electricity plants. These are translated into higher unit costs of energy. Investing in nuclear power is doubly unwise because that detracts from developing renewable energy, some of which (e.g. wind) has already become commercially competitive.

The history of nuclear power is a story, according to energy consultant Amory Lovins, of the greatest failure in the world’s industrial history. It’s also a story of euphoric projections and repeatedly missed targets. Thus, had the nuclear industry’s projections, made a quarter-century ago, materialised, the globe would have had 10 times more nuclear power than it has today. India is a prime example of this failure. We’re still well under half of the target (10,000 MW) set for 1980!

Nuclear power contributes 16 percent to global electricity generation—and an even more modest 6 percent to energy consumption. This contribution will shrink rapidly in the coming decades. In place of the 114 reactors (of a world total of 435) that will be retired within a decade from now on reaching the age of 40 years, only 29 new ones are under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the body mandated to promote nuclear power. Even if reactors in the nebulous “planning” stage are added, the new capacity won’t match the capacity being retired.

Even the conservative pro-nuclear Economist magazine concedes that most reactors in the rich OECD countries, which account for two-thirds of the world total, will close down. Major countries like Germany, Britain, Italy, Sweden and Belgium are phasing out nuclear power. Even France, the world’s most nuclear-powered country, with 79 percent of power drawn from the atom, has shut down 11 reactors and has plans for only one new reactor.

This means there’s no global nuclear reconnaissance, as romantically predicted. Only a few Asian countries, including China, South Korea, Indonesia and India, have plans for major expansion. These aren’t societies that greatly value environment safety.

Nuclear power bristles with safety and environmental problems. Radiation is the most ubiquitous. Each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle releases ionising radiation, an invisible, intangible, silent poison, which damages the DNA of cells and causes cancer or genetic disorders. Radiation can’t be eliminated or extinguished; it can only be relocated. Radiation is harmful in all doses—in routine emissions, as well as big releases.

Nuclear power is highly accident-prone. It involves complex, interlocked systems operating at relatively high temperatures and pressures. Chernobyl, which has claimed 95,000 lives since 1986, remains the world’s worst accident. Yet, all reactor types can undergo a catastrophic accident with a core meltdown and large radioactivity releases. No amount of extraneous or marginal “protection”, like containment domes, can remedy structural flaws in existing reactor designs. The probability of a Chernobyl is admittedly low, but its consequences so unacceptable that even an ultra-low probability isn’t good enough.

Radioactive wastes are nuclear power’s worst legacy. All nuclear activity produces wastes; some remain dangerously active for thousands of years. Thus, plutonium-239, formed as reactors burn uranium, has a half-life of 24,400 years. And uranium-235’s half-life is 710 million years! Science knows no container which can safely store such wastes for so long. Disposal isn’t remotely on the agenda. No geological formations are stable for that length of time. Building nuclear plants is like constructing homes without toilets, only more dangerous.

In Haripur’s case, these generic problems are compounded by location-specific issues. The site’s proximity to the eastern coalbelt (about 400 km) further undermines its economic viability: the DAE itself says nuclear power is only competitive beyond a distance of 800 km from a coal pithead. The Haripur coast is notoriously cyclone-prone and periodically lashed by waves that make deep incursions. Should tidal water enter the reactor building, as nearly happened at Kalpakam during the tsunami 2 years ago, it’s liable to poison large swathes of land. It’s patently ill-advised to site a nuclear plant at such a vulnerable location, where a 20 km-long dyke (protective wall) was built decades ago to prevent flooding.

The Haripur plant will pose serious human problems. If the DAE follows its own siting regulations—a 1.5 km-radius totally uninhabited “exclusive zone” around the reactor, and a further 30 km radius with a sparse population—, it will have to evict over 10,000 families. This is a mind-boggling number. West Bengal has no land for resettling them. As I noted during a day trip to Haripur, large numbers of people who live next to the coast are fisherfolk, many of them landless. Their livelihoods will be destroyed if they are displaced.

The Haripur area, just 7 km from Kanthi town (pop. 78,000), has a flourishing agrarian economy enriched by sea and inland fisheries, fruit and vegetable cultivation, reed-based handicrafts, and other occupations. The land is extraordinarily fertile.

Many farmers told me they earn close to Rs 3 lakhs per acre through rice and pulse cultivation, and by growing brinjals, tomato and gourds (for which Haripur is famous), as well as cashewnuts, mangoes and chikoos. It would be utterly tragic if this thriving, throbbing economy with a potential for healthy industrialisation were laid to ruin by the mindless construction of a nuclear plant.

The entire population of the area is opposed to the plant. It’s overwhelmingly literate and has heard of Chernobyl, radiation and plutonium. People oppose the plant not only because it will displace and impoverish them. They say there should be “no nuclear power, anywhere, anytime”. Since November 17 last, the people have blocked entry into Haripur. DAE teams were twice sent back. No government representative can enter the village in a four-wheeler. There will be serious bloodshed if the government imposes the plant on a people determined to resist it.

It doesn’t make sense even from the DAE’s point of view to impose it. It’ll get further discredited by repeating a larger version of Narora. When Narora was chosen for India’s third nuclear power station for political reasons, DAE scientists, including the late A K Ganguly, opposed it on the ground that nuclear power has no place in the lush Gangetic plains. This applies a fortiori to Haripur. The Left Front will incur the public’s anger if it imposes the project on it. Its own ranks are opposed to it. It must respect them—and sound economic, human and environmental logic. It must scrap the plant NOW!