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Nuclear power in India: a book review
Journal of Cleaner Production 79 (2014) 283e285
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Book review Nuclear power in India: a book review Nuclear Power, Economic Development Discourse and the Environment: The Case of India (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies), Manu V. Mathai. Routledge, London and New York (2013). p. 247. ISBN: 978-0-415-62916-4 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-203-10014-1 (e-book) Manu V. Mathai is a Research Fellow with the Science and Technology for Sustainable Societies Program at the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies, Japan. In spite of modern technological advances, world civilization experiences increasing environmental degradation and human inequality. The impulse of decision-makers is to address societal problems and create economic growth with more technology, including civilian nuclear energy systems that promise abundantdand even infinitedpower. According to Dr. Manu V. Mathai, the author of Nuclear Power, Economic Development Discourse and the Environment: The Case of India, the concepts of cornucopianism and its megamachine materialization shape modern policies relating to economic and technological development by nations, and those ideas have particularly influenced post-colonial India. Dr. Mathai's thought-provoking book examined the genesis and evolution of India's approach to energy and investigated alternatives to the country's embrace of nuclear power. Dr. Mathai, a Research Fellow with the Science and Technology for Sustainable Societies Program at the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies, Japan, supported his arguments with concepts developed by Lewis Mumford, the historian and public intellectual of the mid-twentieth century famed for his still-relevant work on the social effects of technology. Mumford introduced the term, “megamachine,” to represent a large hierarchical organization, a machine using humans as its components. Dr. Mathai replaced Mumford's wartime-crisis and absoluteruler constructs with peacetime conceptions, such as underdevelopment and cornucopianism, which achieved the same effects as Mumford's constructs. India is a striking example of the role the perceptions of underdevelopment played in the attitudes of the post-independence leadership and many of the people, and how the predispositions of an absolute ruler were manifest in corporate and political players who had a mandate in which they did not seek endorsement for their objectives and, in fact, whose developmental and technological goals were veiled in secrecy or articulated outside the political process itself. Where Gandhi envisioned a decentralization of industrial production to enable a dispersion of economic wealth, Nehru's attitudes concerning a centrally planned economy predominated as the solution to underdevelopment after India's independence. Nehru, in spite of being a visionary, did not question the use of http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.04.085 0959-6526
extensive technology to achieve the goals of development, and supported these objectives with the deep conviction that India, as an underdeveloped nation, was absolutely required to develop and be self-reliant for the sake of its survival. The notion of underdevelopment pervaded the mindset of the nation to the extent that economic expansion was a sacrosanct social and political first priority, and created a headlong rush to become “civilized” by any means necessary. Basic industries and cutting-edge technologies were encouraged to create plentiful goods for mass consumption at reasonable prices, to engender substantial employment, eradicate poverty, increase foreign exchange earnings and protect India's sovereignty. The call to develop led to a series of five-year plans, all of which emphasized nuclear power due to its perceived plenitudeda perception influenced by so-called developed nations. A hidden factor in the desirability of nuclear power was the government's concomitant desire to have access to nuclear weapon technologies to deter aggression by other nations. It needs to be emphasized that a nation's decision to develop nuclear energy for civilian use is often an excuse to justify research and development of nuclear weapons. Acting under the cornucopian idea that nuclear energy is practically limitless and that any problems can be handled by ever improving technology, India initiated a three-stage nuclear energy program that would start with uranium-based reactors, the technology and raw material for which would be partially imported. The plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of the first stage, converted into an oxide form and mixed with uranium, would form the fuel core in the second-stage reactors. This fuel core would be surrounded by a “blanket” of thorium that, when it absorbs neutrons, would produce uranium-233 (U-233), a fissile isotope of uranium. This would subsequently be used in the third stage, again blanketed with thorium to continuously produce more fuel U-233 by transmuting thorium. Thorium is a resource plentiful within India, and the intent of India's three-stage program was to use uranium only as a bridge to getting the thorium fuel-cycle established. At this time, however, some analysts predict that the three-stage nuclear energy program is not feasible; therefore, not only for the present, but also for decades to come, India must depend on imported uranium for nuclear power if it continues on its present trajectory. The viability of civilian nuclear power is undermined when one considers the short- and long-term economic costs and the inestimable social demands and costs extending for thousands of years into the future. Factors such as proper management of nuclear wastes, potential spillage, and end-of-life issues of nuclear power plants have not been addressed. In spite of the Fukushima reactor core meltdowns, the Indian government insisted they must press ahead with nuclear power expansion, and argued that nuclear power is safe. As Dr. Mathai stated in his book, the government's
284
Book review / Journal of Cleaner Production 79 (2014) 283e285
reaction to the ongoing Fukushima disaster was merely a blink and a shrug: “a pause, nod, shrug policy.” When climate change became a public issue, nuclear power was touted by its proponents as being a green source of energy. India's nuclear energy officials, along with a number of other governments, did not disclose the disadvantages of this energy source and, in fact, they de-emphasized alternatives, such as energy efficiency and decentralized renewable energy, when a combination of such is much more appropriate to serve India's largely rural and dispersed population. In spite of India's seven-decade push for nuclear power, this energy source currently provides only an estimated three percent of India's installed power capacity. The nuclear program was beset by a number of difficulties, not least the international sanctions regime, instituted against the country's atomic energy program after the Government tested a “peaceful nuclear explosive” in 1974. In addition, the effort to rapidly transform from an agrarian to a heavily industrialized society also saw energy demand grow dramatically to satisfy the demands for economic growth. With the advent of economic liberalization, tentatively at first, through the 1980s and then decisively from 1991 onward, India's government shared its decision-making power with market forces to create an affluent society, using a “megatechnic bribe” of privilege and wealth for the workers, creative scientists and engineers who would not otherwise submit to the routines of working in factories. Imported fossil fuels fulfill most of today's energy requirements in India, and that demand, as well as coal production, will continue to grow, even with the addition of nuclear power. Commerce, mainly industry and transport, consumes almost half of India's available energy, whereas households use the other half with that portion largely provided by firewood, cow dung and plant waste. Two-thirds of India's population is rural, but relatively simple technologies enabling the welfare of these people are being neglected, forcing them to migrate from impoverished villages to overcrowded cities and triggering an onslaught of suicides by desperate farmers with no means for survival. The people had little say in the energy models promulgated by governmental, industrial and financial authorities. In fact, central planners ignored solar energy during crucial post-independence decades. This oversight in a country that receives three hundred days of sunlight a year demonstrates extreme shortsightedness. Instead, in Indiada country competitive with the United States in computer and consumer technologiesdthe emphasis is placed on urban-industrial growth, causing a large proportion of its population to suffer needlessly from poverty. Energy efficiency along with a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal energies would cost far less than nuclear plants that necessitate lengthy life cycles and significant economic and social costs in the short- and long-term future. Dr. Mathai acknowledged the commendable efforts made by some planners to consider the energy needs of the majority of India's people, to use localized and more appropriate technologies, and to reduce the energy requirements of transport. However, the promise of abundant energy through nuclear power is overwhelmingly seductive and the inertia of holding the present course is hard to overcome. Change is especially difficult with the added political concern that urban people are now accustomed to the advantages of globalization and would resist giving up their technological devices to save energy, especially when they are employed to create this technology for consumption abroad. Even though urban people are in the minority, their relative wealth gives them a stronger voice than the impoverished majority who are too pressed with survival needs to become politically engageddor at least until their situation becomes intolerable. Unfortunately, meaningful steps have not yet been taken to protect the rights of the impoverished majority of India's citizens.
The government has, instead, maintained the status quo, due to lack of will, inertia and the difficulty of implementing change. However, social and political considerations could soon provide the motivation. Before India can make appropriate decisions concerning its development of energy sources, it must consider its unique circumstances. It is a country of 1.2 billion people and cannot sensibly emulate the United States, which has a population of only 300 million. Furthermore, the U.S. is the world's largest ecological debtor and nearly fifteen percent of Americans live below the poverty line, with the percentage of disenfranchised people increasing as the current trend continues. This, in itself, shows the failure of the cornucopian and megamachine models. India must recognize that civilian nuclear power cannot deliver on the cornucopian promise of unlimited abundance; such a promise is redolent of propaganda to vindicate nuclear weapons research. Nuclear power as an unlimited energy resource is a blatant myth; no planning agency has factored in the ancillary and social, multi-thousand-year costs that contribute to the true overall price of nuclear power. Those additional factors include, but are not limited to: catastrophic nuclear reactor accidents, like Chernobyl and Fukushima; ongoing ecological hazards, such as byproducts from uranium mines and depleted uranium; management of radioactive wastes for thousands of years; end-of-life considerations and closure of toxic power plants; environmental and human health and safety for the short-term and multi-generational future; inability to change to more efficient technologies once invested in expensive power plants that take decades to bring online. Despite India's poverty, illiteracy, corruption, nepotism and violence, its basic social fabric nurtures peaceful, creative and vigorous social movements. Democratic institutions thrive, bringing economic and cultural attention to values that act in the interest of common gooddvalues that are missing from the cornucopian and megamachine models. Such values can inspire and motivate changes in the direction of decentralized renewableenergy-based systems. Dr. Mathai insisted that India prioritize human needs in its development and let the determination of how to develop economically be a democratic process in order to implement community values and ensure community trust. Planners can identify the priorities established by the community and meet those goals by the least-cost approach, using renewable energy alternatives and stressing energy efficiency and quality, instead of growth for the sake of growth. The current world emphasis on national security enabled by economic and military power should be reframed because it conflicts with human values of equality and sustainability. The socalled developed nations mostly embrace nuclear power and are the leading ecological debtors and principal belligerents of the world. Humanity needs alternatives to such a structure. Behavioral changes are needed to distinguish between need and greed. The people in the society must live together, and decentralized structures enable cooperation by being local, socially responsive and adaptable. A commonwealth economy can be established with the goals of sustainability and justice, and can build on technological innovations. Commonwealth funds can be set aside for investing in efficiency measures. Households, businesses, and municipalities can borrow initial capital from such funds and replenish the commonwealth with a portion of their energy savings. Dr. Mathai recommended the administrative model of a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), as implemented by Delaware in the
Book review / Journal of Cleaner Production 79 (2014) 283e285
United States, to coordinate customer-sited renewable energy programs and provide competitive procurement and conservation incentives for consumers, a parallel to how conventional utilities provide a point-of-contact for energy supply. This reviewer might have preferred that the book's author had presented a more definitive ‘solutions approach,’ with less coverage of India's post-independence history, significant though it is. Nevertheless, she understands that there are giant difficulties in suggesting and implementing sweeping changes for a nation that holds approximately seventeen percent of the world's people, a close second to China's nineteen percent. To put population in perspective, the third most populous country, the United States, contains a mere four and a half percent of the world's people, which also reinforces the ludicrousness of extending the United States' energy and development model to India. Furthermore, Dr. Mathai wisely underscored that only strong political will can provide appropriate solutions. When that political will truly exists, little can stop the momentum to find solutions, and those solutions would be beyond any imaginative ideas that can be written about at this time. Some readers of Dr. Mathai's valuable work may initially think that Lewis Mumford's mid-twentieth-century concepts are a bit dated. Even though this reviewer was aware of Mumford's signifi-
285
cant contributions, it took further investigation for her to uncover just how relevant his theories still are. This reviewer's greatest hope for Dr. Mathai's insightful book is that it will inspire the scientific community to encourage the Indian government, as well as other governments and decision-makers around the world, to reevaluate the seemingly default attitudes that they hold about the abundance of civilian nuclear power, so that they come to the alternative commitment that a combination of more sustainable and less intrusive energy choices will achieve at least the same output of power with much less economic, social and ecological cost now and for generations to come. If Dr. Mathai is correct in his assessment of the Indian people and their deeply shared commitment to diversity, democracy and social innovation, an optimistic outcome of his research will be that the general population of India will soon awaken to the energy alternatives available to them and catalyze the needed changes from the bottom-up for themselves. Carole Beckham CSU Dominguez Hills, United States E-mail address: [email protected]. Available online 24 June 2014
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Book review Nuclear power in India: a book review Nuclear Power, Economic Development Discourse and the Environment: The Case of India (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies), Manu V. Mathai. Routledge, London and New York (2013). p. 247. ISBN: 978-0-415-62916-4 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-203-10014-1 (e-book) Manu V. Mathai is a Research Fellow with the Science and Technology for Sustainable Societies Program at the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies, Japan. In spite of modern technological advances, world civilization experiences increasing environmental degradation and human inequality. The impulse of decision-makers is to address societal problems and create economic growth with more technology, including civilian nuclear energy systems that promise abundantdand even infinitedpower. According to Dr. Manu V. Mathai, the author of Nuclear Power, Economic Development Discourse and the Environment: The Case of India, the concepts of cornucopianism and its megamachine materialization shape modern policies relating to economic and technological development by nations, and those ideas have particularly influenced post-colonial India. Dr. Mathai's thought-provoking book examined the genesis and evolution of India's approach to energy and investigated alternatives to the country's embrace of nuclear power. Dr. Mathai, a Research Fellow with the Science and Technology for Sustainable Societies Program at the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies, Japan, supported his arguments with concepts developed by Lewis Mumford, the historian and public intellectual of the mid-twentieth century famed for his still-relevant work on the social effects of technology. Mumford introduced the term, “megamachine,” to represent a large hierarchical organization, a machine using humans as its components. Dr. Mathai replaced Mumford's wartime-crisis and absoluteruler constructs with peacetime conceptions, such as underdevelopment and cornucopianism, which achieved the same effects as Mumford's constructs. India is a striking example of the role the perceptions of underdevelopment played in the attitudes of the post-independence leadership and many of the people, and how the predispositions of an absolute ruler were manifest in corporate and political players who had a mandate in which they did not seek endorsement for their objectives and, in fact, whose developmental and technological goals were veiled in secrecy or articulated outside the political process itself. Where Gandhi envisioned a decentralization of industrial production to enable a dispersion of economic wealth, Nehru's attitudes concerning a centrally planned economy predominated as the solution to underdevelopment after India's independence. Nehru, in spite of being a visionary, did not question the use of http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.04.085 0959-6526
extensive technology to achieve the goals of development, and supported these objectives with the deep conviction that India, as an underdeveloped nation, was absolutely required to develop and be self-reliant for the sake of its survival. The notion of underdevelopment pervaded the mindset of the nation to the extent that economic expansion was a sacrosanct social and political first priority, and created a headlong rush to become “civilized” by any means necessary. Basic industries and cutting-edge technologies were encouraged to create plentiful goods for mass consumption at reasonable prices, to engender substantial employment, eradicate poverty, increase foreign exchange earnings and protect India's sovereignty. The call to develop led to a series of five-year plans, all of which emphasized nuclear power due to its perceived plenitudeda perception influenced by so-called developed nations. A hidden factor in the desirability of nuclear power was the government's concomitant desire to have access to nuclear weapon technologies to deter aggression by other nations. It needs to be emphasized that a nation's decision to develop nuclear energy for civilian use is often an excuse to justify research and development of nuclear weapons. Acting under the cornucopian idea that nuclear energy is practically limitless and that any problems can be handled by ever improving technology, India initiated a three-stage nuclear energy program that would start with uranium-based reactors, the technology and raw material for which would be partially imported. The plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of the first stage, converted into an oxide form and mixed with uranium, would form the fuel core in the second-stage reactors. This fuel core would be surrounded by a “blanket” of thorium that, when it absorbs neutrons, would produce uranium-233 (U-233), a fissile isotope of uranium. This would subsequently be used in the third stage, again blanketed with thorium to continuously produce more fuel U-233 by transmuting thorium. Thorium is a resource plentiful within India, and the intent of India's three-stage program was to use uranium only as a bridge to getting the thorium fuel-cycle established. At this time, however, some analysts predict that the three-stage nuclear energy program is not feasible; therefore, not only for the present, but also for decades to come, India must depend on imported uranium for nuclear power if it continues on its present trajectory. The viability of civilian nuclear power is undermined when one considers the short- and long-term economic costs and the inestimable social demands and costs extending for thousands of years into the future. Factors such as proper management of nuclear wastes, potential spillage, and end-of-life issues of nuclear power plants have not been addressed. In spite of the Fukushima reactor core meltdowns, the Indian government insisted they must press ahead with nuclear power expansion, and argued that nuclear power is safe. As Dr. Mathai stated in his book, the government's
284
Book review / Journal of Cleaner Production 79 (2014) 283e285
reaction to the ongoing Fukushima disaster was merely a blink and a shrug: “a pause, nod, shrug policy.” When climate change became a public issue, nuclear power was touted by its proponents as being a green source of energy. India's nuclear energy officials, along with a number of other governments, did not disclose the disadvantages of this energy source and, in fact, they de-emphasized alternatives, such as energy efficiency and decentralized renewable energy, when a combination of such is much more appropriate to serve India's largely rural and dispersed population. In spite of India's seven-decade push for nuclear power, this energy source currently provides only an estimated three percent of India's installed power capacity. The nuclear program was beset by a number of difficulties, not least the international sanctions regime, instituted against the country's atomic energy program after the Government tested a “peaceful nuclear explosive” in 1974. In addition, the effort to rapidly transform from an agrarian to a heavily industrialized society also saw energy demand grow dramatically to satisfy the demands for economic growth. With the advent of economic liberalization, tentatively at first, through the 1980s and then decisively from 1991 onward, India's government shared its decision-making power with market forces to create an affluent society, using a “megatechnic bribe” of privilege and wealth for the workers, creative scientists and engineers who would not otherwise submit to the routines of working in factories. Imported fossil fuels fulfill most of today's energy requirements in India, and that demand, as well as coal production, will continue to grow, even with the addition of nuclear power. Commerce, mainly industry and transport, consumes almost half of India's available energy, whereas households use the other half with that portion largely provided by firewood, cow dung and plant waste. Two-thirds of India's population is rural, but relatively simple technologies enabling the welfare of these people are being neglected, forcing them to migrate from impoverished villages to overcrowded cities and triggering an onslaught of suicides by desperate farmers with no means for survival. The people had little say in the energy models promulgated by governmental, industrial and financial authorities. In fact, central planners ignored solar energy during crucial post-independence decades. This oversight in a country that receives three hundred days of sunlight a year demonstrates extreme shortsightedness. Instead, in Indiada country competitive with the United States in computer and consumer technologiesdthe emphasis is placed on urban-industrial growth, causing a large proportion of its population to suffer needlessly from poverty. Energy efficiency along with a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal energies would cost far less than nuclear plants that necessitate lengthy life cycles and significant economic and social costs in the short- and long-term future. Dr. Mathai acknowledged the commendable efforts made by some planners to consider the energy needs of the majority of India's people, to use localized and more appropriate technologies, and to reduce the energy requirements of transport. However, the promise of abundant energy through nuclear power is overwhelmingly seductive and the inertia of holding the present course is hard to overcome. Change is especially difficult with the added political concern that urban people are now accustomed to the advantages of globalization and would resist giving up their technological devices to save energy, especially when they are employed to create this technology for consumption abroad. Even though urban people are in the minority, their relative wealth gives them a stronger voice than the impoverished majority who are too pressed with survival needs to become politically engageddor at least until their situation becomes intolerable. Unfortunately, meaningful steps have not yet been taken to protect the rights of the impoverished majority of India's citizens.
The government has, instead, maintained the status quo, due to lack of will, inertia and the difficulty of implementing change. However, social and political considerations could soon provide the motivation. Before India can make appropriate decisions concerning its development of energy sources, it must consider its unique circumstances. It is a country of 1.2 billion people and cannot sensibly emulate the United States, which has a population of only 300 million. Furthermore, the U.S. is the world's largest ecological debtor and nearly fifteen percent of Americans live below the poverty line, with the percentage of disenfranchised people increasing as the current trend continues. This, in itself, shows the failure of the cornucopian and megamachine models. India must recognize that civilian nuclear power cannot deliver on the cornucopian promise of unlimited abundance; such a promise is redolent of propaganda to vindicate nuclear weapons research. Nuclear power as an unlimited energy resource is a blatant myth; no planning agency has factored in the ancillary and social, multi-thousand-year costs that contribute to the true overall price of nuclear power. Those additional factors include, but are not limited to: catastrophic nuclear reactor accidents, like Chernobyl and Fukushima; ongoing ecological hazards, such as byproducts from uranium mines and depleted uranium; management of radioactive wastes for thousands of years; end-of-life considerations and closure of toxic power plants; environmental and human health and safety for the short-term and multi-generational future; inability to change to more efficient technologies once invested in expensive power plants that take decades to bring online. Despite India's poverty, illiteracy, corruption, nepotism and violence, its basic social fabric nurtures peaceful, creative and vigorous social movements. Democratic institutions thrive, bringing economic and cultural attention to values that act in the interest of common gooddvalues that are missing from the cornucopian and megamachine models. Such values can inspire and motivate changes in the direction of decentralized renewableenergy-based systems. Dr. Mathai insisted that India prioritize human needs in its development and let the determination of how to develop economically be a democratic process in order to implement community values and ensure community trust. Planners can identify the priorities established by the community and meet those goals by the least-cost approach, using renewable energy alternatives and stressing energy efficiency and quality, instead of growth for the sake of growth. The current world emphasis on national security enabled by economic and military power should be reframed because it conflicts with human values of equality and sustainability. The socalled developed nations mostly embrace nuclear power and are the leading ecological debtors and principal belligerents of the world. Humanity needs alternatives to such a structure. Behavioral changes are needed to distinguish between need and greed. The people in the society must live together, and decentralized structures enable cooperation by being local, socially responsive and adaptable. A commonwealth economy can be established with the goals of sustainability and justice, and can build on technological innovations. Commonwealth funds can be set aside for investing in efficiency measures. Households, businesses, and municipalities can borrow initial capital from such funds and replenish the commonwealth with a portion of their energy savings. Dr. Mathai recommended the administrative model of a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), as implemented by Delaware in the
Book review / Journal of Cleaner Production 79 (2014) 283e285
United States, to coordinate customer-sited renewable energy programs and provide competitive procurement and conservation incentives for consumers, a parallel to how conventional utilities provide a point-of-contact for energy supply. This reviewer might have preferred that the book's author had presented a more definitive ‘solutions approach,’ with less coverage of India's post-independence history, significant though it is. Nevertheless, she understands that there are giant difficulties in suggesting and implementing sweeping changes for a nation that holds approximately seventeen percent of the world's people, a close second to China's nineteen percent. To put population in perspective, the third most populous country, the United States, contains a mere four and a half percent of the world's people, which also reinforces the ludicrousness of extending the United States' energy and development model to India. Furthermore, Dr. Mathai wisely underscored that only strong political will can provide appropriate solutions. When that political will truly exists, little can stop the momentum to find solutions, and those solutions would be beyond any imaginative ideas that can be written about at this time. Some readers of Dr. Mathai's valuable work may initially think that Lewis Mumford's mid-twentieth-century concepts are a bit dated. Even though this reviewer was aware of Mumford's signifi-
285
cant contributions, it took further investigation for her to uncover just how relevant his theories still are. This reviewer's greatest hope for Dr. Mathai's insightful book is that it will inspire the scientific community to encourage the Indian government, as well as other governments and decision-makers around the world, to reevaluate the seemingly default attitudes that they hold about the abundance of civilian nuclear power, so that they come to the alternative commitment that a combination of more sustainable and less intrusive energy choices will achieve at least the same output of power with much less economic, social and ecological cost now and for generations to come. If Dr. Mathai is correct in his assessment of the Indian people and their deeply shared commitment to diversity, democracy and social innovation, an optimistic outcome of his research will be that the general population of India will soon awaken to the energy alternatives available to them and catalyze the needed changes from the bottom-up for themselves. Carole Beckham CSU Dominguez Hills, United States E-mail address: [email protected]. Available online 24 June 2014