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Kalpakkam nuclear plant reopens
Tuesday, 16 December 2003, 20:30 IST
CHENNAI: An atomic reprocessing plant in Tamil Nadu, shut down in July following a radiation leak, has reopened amid fresh questions about safety standards at the Kalpakkam complex following the death of three people due to a rare cancer.
The plant, located about 80 km from here, was shut down after workers staged protests demanding better safety norms following a radiation leak on January 21 that was described by officials as the "worst-ever incident in the history of Department of Atomic Energy".
Following the reopening the facility this week, officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) said the Kalpakkam complex was completely safe and spent fuel there was neutralised and stored safely.
Questions are, however, being raised about safety standards following the death of three people from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.
A doctor working in the local community claimed the incidence of myeloma cases in the area around Kalpakkam was very high.
"The link between myeloma and nuclear radiation is well established," the doctor said.
K. Mohan Das and S. Ponnaiah, employees of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and Sundarammal, a resident of Kalpakkam township, died this year due to myeloma.
BARC, one of India's leading nuclear research facilities, has nuclear reprocessing and storage facilities at Kalpakkam.
According to patient records at the Department of Atomic Energy hospital in Kalpakkam, Das was suffering from multiple myeloma and was referred for treatment to Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore, where he died.
Two other cases of myeloma were treated at the Ramachandra Hospital in Chennai.
Three myeloma deaths within a span of 18 months in a population of 25,000 living around the Kalpakkam complex are considered by cancer specialists to be four times the normal and statistically significant.
In India, deaths due to multiple myeloma in normal people is estimated to be 2.4 for every 100,000 people a year.
Some eight million people living around the Kalpakkam complex, which is also home to 10,000 workers.
BARC authorities have said the six workers affected by radiation in January had been moved out of Kalpakkam and relocated.
"Their health is being constantly monitored," BARC said in a statement Monday.
Meanwhile, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will open a three-day conference on nuclear fuel cycle technology at Kalpakkam Wednesday. Scientists and bureaucrats will review technology used by India at the brainstorming session.
The Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant is part of a complex that also houses atomic reactors of NPCIL and research units and test plants of the Department of Atomic Energy.
S.P. Bhoje, director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, said Monday that India was one of the very few countries "with a complete nuclear fuel cycle".
This means, the cycle encompasses "uranium mining, processing, use as reactor fuel, irradiation management, spent fuel and recycling of spent fuel".
Normally, 0.5 percent of uranium is used up in the process of nuclear power generation. India claims as much as 60 percent of uranium is used in indigenous processes through reprocessing and reuse.
Two low-yield weapons made from fuel reprocessed at Kalpakkam were among the five nuclear devices tested by India in May 1998.
In test fast breeder reactors at Kalpakkam, India is using enriched plutonium as fuel that again is reprocessed.
BARC is also building a waste storage plant where high value nuclear waste will be immobilized in glass and nitric acid.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS
