BY INDER MALHOTRA
The time has now come when the central government should concentrate on the country’s nuclear power generation programme. In recent months it has been sadly neglected even though it is facing several obstructions, most notably at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu but not there alone.

In the circumstances it is entirely understandable that nuclear cooperation was on top of the agenda when the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh held his annual summit meeting with the Russian President, Mr Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin in Moscow (December 15-17). The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), costing Rs 1,400 crore, has been built by Russia. Ironically, it is ready for being commissioned but its two reactors of a 1,000 MW capacity each are lying idle because of the virulent and protracted agitation against it in surrounding areas.
Opposition in Kudankulam
Dr Singh assured his hosts that the first reactor at Kudankulam would be made operational within two weeks and the second, six months later. But judging by the sharp and angry reaction to this of both, the agitators at and around the project and Tamil Nadu’s feisty Chief Minister, Ms J Jayalalithaa, this appears doubtful. A prime ministerial promise that is not kept would be an acute embarrassment internationally.
In his statement on the decisions taken at the summit, the Prime Minister had declared that the Kudankulam agitation had been “overdone” because the Plant was “absolutely safe.” Experts of the Atomic Energy establishment, he had added, had answered all the doubts and misgivings of those that feared for their safety and livelihood. To this, the response of the protestors was to intensify their agitation. At the time of writing, they have extended the agitation to the entire state at least for a day. They are also demanding peremptorily that all uranium should be removed from the KNPP site before the year’s end.
More importantly, Ms Jayalalithaa, in her terse letter to the Prime Minister, has expressed her “amazement” that he should have decided to commission the reactors at Kudankulam even before the 15-member team of nuclear experts had interacted with the people worried about their future. For reasons unknown, the Minister of State in the PMO, Mr V Narayanswamy took this opportunity to chastise the state government for its failure to “act” against the obstreperous agitators who are blocking entry into the Plant even though the Union government has been urging it to do so.
The problem at Kudankulam is primarily political and can be resolved only politically, not through presentations by nuclear technocrats. To put it more bluntly, the problem can be got out of the way only with the cooperation of Ms Jayalalithaa, and New Delhi should know that she wouldn’t talk to mere ministers of state or functionaries of the Atomic Energy Commission. Top leaders at the Centre have to engage themselves in talks with her.  
If the kerfuffle at Kudankulam goes on, a stage could be reached when the Russians would start worrying about the future. For, it is no secret that they were expecting that contracts for the construction of Kudankulam 3 and Kudankulam 4 would be signed at the summit. They had to be content with the joint declaration to the effect that the “terms and conditions” for the additional two reactors at Kudankulam had been “agreed to,” and that a formal agreement would be signed soon. In the current situation the Indian side could not have gone beyond that.
Left to them, the Russians would like to install not four but eight reactors at Kudankulam. Even with the best of will on India’s part that would not be possible. So they will have to be given alternative sites acceptable to them. Haripur in West Bengal was one such but Chief Minister Ms Mamata Banerjee does not want any nuclear power project in her state. Jaitapur in Maharashtra, where six French reactors are to be put up, is for the present free from agitation. But the opposition to the project in the area remains strong.
Two reactors under 80s agreement
Meanwhile, the Indo-Russian understanding on two more reactors at Kudankulam has an important repercussion with much wider significance. No one has announced it explicitly but the Russian position that the two new reactors at Kudankulam are under the original agreement of 1980s has been accepted. Consequently, these reactors would not attract the Indian law on nuclear liability that was enacted much later.
This is an issue on which the United States is much more perturbed than the other two nuclear suppliers, Russia and France. For, the American suppliers who were waiting anxiously to partake of the highly lucrative Indian nuclear market are dismayed. They argue that they cannot invest in India because of the law that places the responsibility for paying compensation to the victims of a nuclear accident on both, the operator and the supplier. This is indeed so even though under the Indian law the supplier becomes liable only if the accident occurs because of a defect in the equipment. Moreover, under the rules and regulations framed under this law the suppliers’ liability has been limited to five years only.
Thus it happened that while the Prime Minister was in Moscow, the US under-secretary of state, Mr William Burns was in Delhi discussing the nuclear liability law with high officials. He was courteously told that this country’s laws had to be obeyed, especially after New Delhi had tried to accommodate the suppliers’ concerns to the extent possible.
American advocacy on behalf of suppliers is rather odd because the US has itself wriggled out of its categorical commitment, under the Indo-US nuclear deal, to extend to India “full nuclear cooperation.” It has since taken recourse to an escape hatch. Through the Vienna-based Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, it has got fresh guidelines issued prohibiting the transfer of technologies for nuclear enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) to countries that haven’t signed the NPT. Of these India is certainly one.
The Russians have finessed this restriction neatly. They would, they say, enrich India’s uranium and reprocess its spent fuel on “Russian soil.” This would enable them to honour their bilateral commitments to a “special friend” and also observe their international obligations.