Study flags radioactive waste management lapses

New Delhi: Nuclear power is in the limelight and has assumed much significance in view of the recent civilian nuclear agreement that India has entered into with America.

While ‘nuclear’ has been hailed as the inevitable fuel for the future it also brings along with it considerable dangers in the form of highly potent radioactive waste. This aspect of the nuclear promise needs to be deliberated upon well, especially as India embarks on a journey towards a nuclear-driven tomorrow for herself.

Unfortunately information around this pertinent issue for the most part, has stayed out of the public domain. And this is what constitutes the basic concern for civil society.

Taking this as the basic premise, Toxics Link, an environmental NGO, conducted a study on waste generation and management practices within India's nuclear processes, supported by Heinrich Boll Foundation. 

Upasana Choudhry, who undertook the research, shared the study findings with an audience at a workshop organised in the capital recently.

Flagging critical issues

Starting with mapping the civilian nuclear fuel cycle in India, the study traced the various stages wherein radioactive waste gets generated.

These include stages like mining and milling in which uranium is obtained from its ore, fuel fabrication, reactor operation, and lastly the spent fuel reprocessing stage which puts back Plutonium and Uranium into the nuclear cycle again. In each stage, waste with varying levels of radioactivity is produced.

The permissible level of radioactivity for generic populations has been defined by IAEA, and accordingly radio-wastes have been categorised as low level (LLW), intermediate level (ILW), high level waste (HLW), etc.

There are guidelines for management of waste at all levels of radioactivity with an underlying objective of protection of man and the environment not only now, but in the future as well.

The nuclear fuel cycle in India is largely a closed loop one, with bulk of the waste produced being of low level radioactivity (LLW). While high level radioactive waste has a comparatively more controlled and safer disposal and storage mechanism, it was in the area of low level wastes disposal that certain lapses on the ground were observed.

Harmful exposure

Even with low levels of radiation, radio-waste can be harmful if exposure to it is for a prolonged period of time. This aspect was flagged particularly with respect to the waste management practices at the mining and milling stage of the uranium ore, where the tailings or residues from the process are disposed off as slurry in tailings dams.

These tailings dams were noted to be located quite close to human habitation at many locations and were not clearly demarcated as out of bounds area for neighbouring populations. People in the nearby areas hence remain fairly exposed to the radioactive waste that goes into these dams.

There have been instances of ground and river water contamination and tailing pipe leaks which compound the risks associated with such wastes.  Moreover due to natural factors like rain, flooding and wind, tailings have been found to have made their way into people’s homes as well.

An adverse impact on human health was noted consequently; in particular instances of lung cancer were attributed to an increased exposure to Radon that is among the releases from tailings.

Lack of awareness

While the radiation risk from tailings dams cannot be wished away completely, the study underlined that public awareness would rather go a long way in achieving the protection that   was required in such areas.

The study however noted that the requisite information even on issues like their own safety was visibly lacking among the people. People impacted health-wise did not seem to know that there was an intrinsic linkage between radiation exposure and their own health.

Furthermore, a stark lack of public participation was observed in the environmental impact assessment process that is a prerequisite in the procedure for any nuclear site selection. In this regard, the overall efforts of the nuclear establishment still leave much to be desired. 

The study did not refute the feasibility of ‘nuclear’ as a power option per se. In fact it rather stands as a more viable option than coal or hydro-based sources of energy. This was further reiterated by Mr. S.K. Malhotra, Head of the Environment and Public Awareness Division of DAE who attended the workshop.

He also added highlighted the comparative environment friendly benefit also that is offered by the nuclear option with lesser omissions, lesser fly ash production and lesser land area requirement. Also present was Dr. Kanwar Raj who heads the Waste Management Division at BARC. He shared technological details of the nuclear waste management programme in India.

Questions arising from concerns flagged by the study were put forward by the workshop participants to both the experts, who also clarified some technical doubts on the nuclear process.

As a priority, the issue of lack of transparency in the nuclear establishment along with that of lack of public participation in any of the planning, design, and disaster-management training stages, was taken up with some disquietude by many among the participants. While it was impressed upon the audience that the waste management practices were well up to the standard in India, the experts did also take note of the instances of lapses cited by the study.