Below is a list of leaks, fires and structural damages that have occurred in India’s civilian nuclear power sector. Numerous other examples of oil leaks, hydrogen leaks, fires and high bearing vibrations have often shut plants, and sometimes not (1).
As the Department of Atomic Energy is not obliged to reveal details of ongoings at these plants to the public, there may be many other accidents that we do not know about.
- April 2011 Fire alarms blare in the control room of the Kaiga Generating Station in Karnataka. Comments by officials alternately say there was no fire, that there was only smoke and no fire, and that the fire was not in a sensitive area (2). Details from the AERB are awaited.
- November 2009 Fifty-five employees consume radioactive material after tritiated water finds its way into the drinking water cooler in Kaiga Generating Station. The NPCIL attributes the incident to “an insider’s mischief” (3).
- April 2003 Six tonnes leak of heavy water at reactor II of the Narora Atomic Power Station (NAPS) in Uttar Pradesh (4), indicating safety measures have not been improved from the leak at the same reactor three years previously.
- January 2003 Failure of a valve in the Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant in Tamil Nadu results in the release of high-level waste, exposing six workers to high doses of radiation (5). The leaking area of the plant had no radiation monitors or mechanisms to detect valve failure, which may have prevented the employees’ exposure. A safety committee had previously recommended that the plant be shut down. The management blames the “over enthusiasm” of the workers (6).
- May 2002 Tritiated water leaks from a downgraded heavy water storage tank at the tank farm of Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS) 1&2 into a common dyke area. An estimated 22.2 Curies of radioactivity is released into the environment (7).
- November 2001 A leak of 1.4 tonnes of heavy water at the NAPS I reactor, resulting in one worker receiving an internal radiation dose of 18.49 mSv (8).
- April 2000 Leak of about seven tonnes of heavy water from the moderator system at NAPS Unit II. Various workers involved in the clean-up received ‘significant uptakes of tritium’, although only one had a radiation dose over the recommended annual limit (9).
- March 1999 Somewhere between four and fourteen tonnes (10) of heavy water leaks from the pipes at Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, during a test process. The pipes have a history of cracks and vibration problems (11) . Forty-two people are reportedly involved in mopping up the radioactive liquid (12).
- May 1994 The inner surface of the containment dome of Unit I of Kaiga Generating Station collapses (delaminates) while the plant is under construction. Approximately 130 tonnes of concrete fall from a height of nearly thirty metres (13), injuring fourteen workers. The dome had already been completed (14), forming the part of the reactor designed to prevent escape of radioactive material into the environment in the case of an accident. Fortunately, the core had not then been loaded.
- February 1994 Helium gas and heavy water leak in Unit 1 of RAPS. The plant is shut down until March 1997 (15).
- March 1993 Two blades of the turbine in NAPS Unit I break off, slicing through other blades and indirectly causing a raging fire, which catches onto leaked oil and spreads through the turbine building. The smoke sensors fail to detect the fire, which is only noticed once workers see the flames. It causes a blackout in the plant, including the shutdown of the secondary cooling systems, and power is not restored for seventeen hours. In the meantime, operators have to manually activate the primary shutdown system. They also climb onto the roof to open valves to slow the reactions in the core by hand (16). The incident was rated as a Level 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, INES.
- May 1992 Tube leak causes a radioactive release of 12 Curies of radioactivity from Tarapur Atomic Power Station (17).
- January 1992 Four tons of heavy water spilt at RAPS (17).
- December 1991 A leak from pipelines in the vicinity of CIRUS and Dhruva research reactors at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay, Maharashtra, results in severe Cs-137 soil contamination of thousands of times the acceptable limit. Local vegetation was also found to be contaminated, though contract workers digging to the leaking pipeline were reportedly not tested for radiation exposure, despite the evidence of their high dose (18).
- July 1991 A contracted labourer mistakenly paints the walls of RAPS with heavy water before applying a coat of whitewash. He also washed his paintbrush, face and hands in the deuterated and tritiated water, and has not been traced since (19).
- March 1991 Heavy water leak at MAPS takes four days to clean up (20).
Sources
1 For more details, see ‘Safety First? Kaiga and Other Nuclear Stories’ by M.V. Ramana and Ashwin Kumar, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLV No. 7, 13 February 2010. The article lists many of the accidents shown here, and others.
2 M. Raghuram, “Kaiga officials are tight-lipped about control room fire” DNA, 11 April 2011;
“It was a faulty fire alarm, says Kaiga Director”, ndtv.com, 11 April 2011.
3 T.S. Subramanian, ‘Kaiga workers “back to work”’, The Hindu, 29 November 2009
4 Annual Report for the Year 2003-2004, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.
5 S. Anand, ‘India’s Worst Radiation Accident’, Outlook, 28 July 2003, 18-20
6 M.R. Venkatesh, ‘BARC Admits Radiation Error’, Telegraph, 7 August 2003
7 Annual Report for the Year 2002-2003, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.
8 Annual Report for the Year 2001-2002, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.
9 Annual Report for the Year 2000-2001, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.
10 The figure is contested – see T. S. Subramanian, “An Incident at Kalpakkam,” Frontline, 23 April 1999
11 T.S. Gopi Rethinaraj, ‘In The Comfort Of Secrecy,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 55 (6) 52-57, 1999
12 T.S. Subramanian, “An Incident at Kalpakkam”, Frontline, Vol 16, Issue 8, 23 April 1999
13 Buddhi Kota Subbarao, ‘India’s Nuclear Prowess: False Claims and Tragic Truths’, Manushi 109, 1998
14 Sanjay Havanur, “The Dome of Death”, Anumukti, 7 (6):4-5, 1994
15 T.S. Subramanian, ‘Reviving Reactors’ Frontline, Vol 14, No. 26, Dec 1997 – Jan 1998
16 M.V. Ramana and Ashwin Kumar, ‘Safety First? Kaiga and Other Nuclear Stories’, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLV No. 7, 13 February 2010
17 Greenpeace, Calendar of Nuclear Accidents and Events http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html
18 Chinai, Rupa: “Radioactive Leakage at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre”, The Sunday Observer, 6 September 1992
19 RP “A Heavy Whitewash”, translated from Hindi, Rajasthan Patrika, 21 August 1991
20 “National Symposium on Safety of Nuclear Power Plants and Other Facilities”, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Bombay.
Courtesy: Greenpeace India
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Not sure if this is a complete list. In the mid '60's when the Tarapur plant was under construction there was a major accident. it is not in the list
It is really shocking to go through the list of accidents occurred in our nuclear power plants all over the country. Moreover the list is not exhaustive, as nuclear industry people are the crooks and don't allow to leak the accident news. Even the true figures of dead and affected people are never published. All types of media they manage and supress the catastrophes. The accidents mentioned above are given with concrete references. Even the safety of the reactors is doubted by the respective nations in case Jaitapur and Koondakulam. They are honest in admitting the faults in their reactors. On the contrary our dishonest politicians are giving guarantee of the safety of nuclear plants as if the PM and his Ministry will be there forever. The PM should ashamed of the corrupt and inefficient government he lead for about ten years. He is the only PM the country ever had before, who by his vindictive and arrogant approach destroid the life of the poor of this country. Now at least he should listen to the voice of the people of the world in general, and of India in perticular and stop all the nuclear power plants. The Japan, though have only half of the sun hours/year than India, targeted generation of 100 million MW of electricity from solar panels by 2020. The people of this country should ask our adment PM as to why he is runnig after the so called super powers, in fact they are not! As an activist against Jaitapur nuclear power plant, I had experienced the repression and suppression of the government machinery, when I was put in police custody and in jail on the totally false grounds, The PM as I have said above changed the CM of Maharashtra to satisfy his ego to have the plant in Jaitapur without any democratic means. But the people of Jaitapur will never allow this plant to come up,even if the super powers give our PM one more term as they know that he will never get elected on merits.
Decades back I saw radioactive water from split fuel elements are being poured in to the Trombay sea from BARC. When asked one of the directors told me that fishing is banned in the sea surrounding sea. But all the same I could sea fishermen fishing in the area. Every sea fish etc are totally contaminated with radiation and the unfortunate thing is that these sea creatures concentrate the radioactivity by a factor of a lakh. I still think that Sharad Pawars sickness has something to do with his eating of sea fish caught off the coast of Mumbai. Every reactor every day contaminate the surrounding with radiation.
Fukushima and Chernobyl in its day had issued a warning to us Indians. After the 11-3-2011 meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Fukushima in Japan even the countries that are supposed to be best equipped to deal with nuclear disaster are turning away from nuclare power and India should stop our Kudankulam and Jaitapur nuclear power programme. Gullible, corrupt and weak Indians like Manmohan Singh and Sonia are charged with making decisions, that could result in mass mass murder of Indians and the destruction of India. Germany, and USA are abandoning or delaying plans to replace or upgrade their electricity producing nuclear plants as well as stopping the operational life extension of its existing, reactors beyond their original 40 year licensing period. But India and China with little nuclear experience and poor safety records are moving ahead with plans to expand generating capacity and are planning to add 80 new reactors over the next two decades. The United States has 104 of the 436 reactors worldwide but it stopped new reactor power plant construction for the past 32 years, after its 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster. Fukushima is resulting in the radiation poisoning of whole world. Germany has ordered its 17 nuclear reactors to be shut down by 2022. Socialist Party leaders in France that depend for 79% of its power on nuclear reactors, are raising the issue of nuclear power stoppage. In Japan public approval of adding more nuclear plants stood at 82% six years ago, but after Fukushima, only 30% Japanese support nuclear power. Nuclear bureaucracies in India,Tehran, Jerusalem, Islamabad, etc and terror networks are now a threat to the survival of human race on our planet.
Tepco, is the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Seven months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, The utility, with 37,000 employees and cozy alliances with Japanese government, supplied electricity to the economic heart of Japan. The average employee made 7.57 million yen or nearly $100,000. Tepco is now a funeral company. Its president disappeared from public view, and then resigned.. It disclosed the meltdowns at the three reactors, nearly two months after the fact. Like the Department of Atomic Energy and Prime Minister of India who are spinning stories of safety of Indian reactors, fuel storage, waste disposal etc, Tepco spun false stories about the timeline of events at the facility, trying to pin blame on the government. Since the disaster, Tepco has booked $23 billion in losses. Tepco owes $50 billion in compensation to the tens of thousands who lived close to the nuclear plant. The compensation payments could send the company into bankruptcy. This cost is even less than one in 10000 of the total cost of this nuclear power plant catostrophie at Fukushima. Everything that is produced in Japan or in nearby areas of Japan, are contaminated with radiation. Even Japanese cars are contaminated. . On 8-8 2011 Japanese cars imported from Japan were rejected at Russian port Kyoyo, as it had 17uSv/h radiation which was 340 times higher than normal. Radiation is detected in Japanese electric appliances, agricultural products, and all Japanese goods. Even if they assembled somewhere,else all core parts are always exported from Japan because of the patent issue. So Indians have to boycott all Japanese products including cars.
This dumb PM Manmohan have no idea about the nuclear power generation or its damage to our environment and its population. Two applications of nuclear physics have given it a bad name and they are nuclear energy and atomic and hydrogen bombs. I have personally evaluated the safety of nuclear power reactors for IAEA. It is not only the safety of an operating reactor that matters to the public. A shut down reactor is equally dangerous to the environment and can easily be made a source of conamination of surrounding areas and an invitation to terrorists to make the whole distict uninhabitable. No plan is available throughout the world to safely decommission a nuclear reactor. Every nuclear reactor leak radiation all the time to the environment. It is because the local population is more aware of its dangers that they are agitating against it.
Till date USA is not prepared for decommissioning of a nuclear reactor or its waste disposal. India is not prepared for all types of nuclear emergencies and it became clear long back when US supplied Tarapur Reactor got heavily contaminated. Our CANDU reactors are not meeting 911 criteria, and its original design nation Canada has discontinued these type of unsafe reactors. USA secretly sought Japan’s support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world’s oceans under the London Convention. Washington succeeded in incorporating the clause into the treaty. USA constructed nuclear reactors without deciding on disposal methods, forcing it to consider dumping them at sea after they were decommissioned. In 1993 revisions to the London Convention, the dumping of radioactive waste at sea was totally prohibited. However, the clause that approved of dumping in exceptional cases is still in force and the world’s nuclear thug USA can still contaminate our oceans. India should stop all nuclear power plant constructions as it is costly, contaminating for millions of years and can leave large parts of India as wasteland. The on-going Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan brought us heartbreaking pictures of skeletal dogs and ragged cats roaming the streets and of dying livestock left to starve. Marine animals are also suffering, contaminated by tens of thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water dumped into the ocean at Fukushima. But nuclear power harms animals without an accident. Millions of fish and spawn are pulverized by reactor intake systems while endangered sea turtles, manatees and seals are injured and killed