(India) Anti-Nuclear Fishermen

 

On 22nd Sep­tem­ber 3,000 fish­er­men and anti-nuclear activists aboard 500 boats attempt­ed to block­ade a port to pre­vent the unload­ing of nuclear fuel into the recent­ly con­struct­ed Kudanku­lam nuclear pow­er plant locat­ed on the Tamil Nadu coast in south­ern India.

 

On 22nd Sep­tem­ber 3,000 fish­er­men and anti-nuclear activists aboard 500 boats attempt­ed to block­ade a port to pre­vent the unload­ing of nuclear fuel into the recent­ly con­struct­ed Kudanku­lam nuclear pow­er plant locat­ed on the Tamil Nadu coast in south­ern India.

This mas­sive pow­er plant is a joint ven­ture between India and Rus­sia and hous­es two nuclear pres­sur­ized water reac­tors (PWR) reac­tors, with future plans to con­struct four addi­tion­al reac­tors at the site.

This has result­ed in a peri­od of sus­tained direct action by local res­i­dents, strong­ly opposed to the plan­t’s con­struc­tion. Over a mil­lion peo­ple live with­in 30 km of the pro­posed plant. Over the last year demon­stra­tors have endured severe repres­sion as over 10,000 police and para­mil­i­tary forces have been deployed in the area. Vil­lagers have been beat­en, hun­dreds have been arrest­ed and some activists face charges of sedi­tion and even of wag­ing war against the gov­ern­ment. In April the police cut off the water, food and pow­er-sup­ply to protest­ing vil­lagers and imposed a cur­few in the vil­lages at the heart of the resis­tance.

At this point the Peo­ples Move­ment Against Nuclear Ene­gy (PMANE) called off their protests hop­ing for some respite for the peo­ple. They filed a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion against the gov­ern­ments civ­il nuclear pro­gram com­plain­ing that the plant itself was unsafe, that there has not been a pub­lic hear­ing and thus it is an author­i­tar­i­an project imposed upon the peo­ple. Unfor­tu­nate­ly their pleas were ignored and when the Indi­an gov­ern­ment announced that the load­ing of fuel into the plant would begin on or around 11th Sep­tem­ber the peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly sprung into action.

CHAIN REACTION

On 10th Sep­tem­ber thou­sands of anti-nuclear pro­test­ers marched towards the pow­er plant, many were injured by the police who lobbed tear-gas shells into the crowd, while at Man­ap­padu police fired into the crowd and a fish­er­man was shot and killed. On the 13th hun­dreds of pro­test­ers formed a human chain in the sea to protest at the load­ing of the fuel, stay­ing in for two hour inter­vals in shifts. They demand­ed the release of all arrestees, com­pen­sa­tion for those injured by the police and an end to the police repres­sion.

One major fact is that there are more than one mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with­in a 30km radius of the plant, which in the event of a dis­as­ter would make the evac­u­a­tion of the pop­u­la­tion impos­si­ble. This far exceeds the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Atom­ic Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Board and so the plant should nev­er have been built there. Not that this will wor­ry the Russ­ian firm that sup­plied and built the reac­tor as the Indi­an gov­ern­ment agreed that they will have zero lia­bil­i­ty in the event of an acci­dent. (Sim­i­lar con­di­tions apply to pow­er com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for major civic emer­gen­cies in the UK)

Beyond their legit­i­mate safe­ty con­cerns, vil­lagers have oth­er rea­sons to be angry. The gov­ern­ment has invest­ed mil­lions on a new hos­pi­tal and oth­er facil­i­ties exclu­sive­ly for plant empoy­ees, mean­while the rest of the locals live in squalor lack­ing even basic facil­i­ties such as run­ning water.

The Indi­an gov­ern­ment has attempt­ed to dis­cred­it the move­ment com­plain­ing that for­eign organ­i­sa­tions are agi­tat­ing the local peo­ple and that this should not be allowed. Despite all of this fur­ther demon­stra­tions are planned for the com­ing weeks and they are not giv­ing up.