NUCLEAR POWER

Fishermen's fears

T.S. SUBRAMANIAN

FISHERMEN belonging to Koodankulam in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu fear that their catch will be depleted once the two reactors of the Koodankulam Atomic Power Project become critical and coolant water is let into the sea. Groups opposed to the project claim that the site is prone to cyclones and earthquakes.

At a function organised on March 31 to mark the first pour of concrete for the project, Dr. A.D.K. Jeyaseelan, who represents the Tirunelveli Lok Sabha constituency, and P. Sounderarajan, Rajya Sabha member, referred to the apprehensions of the local fishermen. Sounderarajan wondered what would happen if the temperature of the sea water crossed 50øC. "This needs attention," he said.

Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and V.K. Chaturvedi, Chairman and Managing Director, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPC), took pains to put the issue in the right perspective. Chaturvedi said that the temperature of the sea under normal conditions, was between 23øC to 30øC and that it would go up to 37øC after the discharge of the coolant. At the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS), Rawatbhatta, where the coolant water was let into the Rana Pratap Sagar lake, it was found that the fish population was not affected, he said. Nor has there been any complaint from the fishermen of Kalpakkam about fish catch going down because of the discharge of coolant water from the Madras Atomic Power Station.

Kakodkar pointed out that whatever be the rise in the temperature, the temperature of the entire water body went up. The temperature rose by 7øC at the point of discharge. Within a short distance from here the temperature got homogenised. "The sea is such a large water body that you don't experience any overall increase in temperature," he asserted. Besides, the mixing of the coolant with the sea water could be so designed that the effect was restricted to a very small location, he said. So, he said, on the one side there was scientific understanding of the problem and on the other, there was design strategy. "You can be sure that there is absolutely no cause for concern at all."

According to Kakodkar, when the issue first came up in another context, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) invited all those who were knowledgeable about the field to present their views. About 80 persons from various universities responded. However, the data that emerged related to colder climate. Since there was no data available on Indian conditions, a programme to generate data was under way now, Kakodkar said. "The exercise would last about five years." A seminar was organised jointly by the DAE and the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli in February last on thermal ecology.

Kakodar narrated an incident to assert that the fish catch would not be affected. There were similar apprehensions among fishermen in Japan when an electricity project was under construction. (Japan has a colder climate.) The power station was shut down at the end of the year for maintenance work. The fishermen did not react in any manner. However, when the second annual shutdown was announced, the demand came from the fisherman that the power station should not be shut down because during the outage, "the fish catch would go down". So this problem should be studied from "scientific facts and actual experience", Kakodkar said.

Chaturvedi dismissed fears that the Koodankulam site was prone to cyclones and earthquakes, saying that it was sheltered by Sri Lanka on the eastern coast. "It is one of the best micro-seismic surveyed sites in the country," he said. In order to design the Koodankulam project, the NPC "located", with the help of a computer, a cyclone that was as "devastating" as the one that struck the Divi Seema area in Andhra Pradesh in November 1977 and also magnified it several times. (The 1977 cyclone left 10,000 people dead.) The test proved that it is a safe site, Chaturvedi said.