SAFETY LESSONS FROM CHINA’S NUCLEAR PLANTS IN THE WAKE OF EARTHQUAKE

Had the People’s Republic of China (PRC) been a democratic society, the world would have known about the damage to several nuclear installations caused by unprecedented earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale in Sichuan province and thereby learnt crucial lessons to take necessary safety precautions in case of similar natural calamities that may take place elsewhere. However, under the communist set up it is rather unthinkable to have such reasonable expectations from a harsh secretive regime extremely inimical to practice of transparency in public dealings. The province hit by earthquake houses some key nuclear facilities in China as well as and the country's chief atomic weapons research laboratory. One sincerely wishes that PRC’s nuclear facilities in Sichuan region as claimed by Beijing are really safe. It is believed that altogether 32 radioactive sources had been buried under debris during high magnitude earthquake centred in Wenchuan County of Sichuan. China also reportedly stores some of its vast arsenal of warheads in Sichuan province, which is also home to several reactors and two plutonium plants. A French nuclear monitoring agency did not rule out damage to nuclear facilities close to earthquake’s epicentre claiming a number of Chinese nuclear sites especially older plant had taken considerable destructive hits. Older nuclear installations were found to have suffered damage owing to less stringent anti-seismic or earthquake construction regulations in Mao era when PRC was trying to hastily catch up with the western world in developing nuclear bomb bypassing stringent safety standards. These had been built before earthquake-proof construction standards were introduced. The sites include the country’s largest storage facility for nuclear warheads, hidden in underground bunkers. Plant code-named 821,a warhead assembly site that houses one of China’s largest reactors is located beside a river in a hilly, forested part of the earthquake zone. Here the spent fuel is reprocessed into plutonium, the main ingredient for fabricating modern nuclear warheads. The site also handles unstable chemical elements found in tritium, plutonium and uranium. Experts are now evaluating if the reactor in this facility could undergo the same kind of disaster which struck the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. The mishap had spewed radioactivity across large parts of Russia and Europe. China’s leading nuclear weapons laboratory, the South West Institute, is based in Mianyang, where the quake has killed an estimated number of 10,000 people and a large number remains missing. In an even more rugged and inaccessible region towards north, very close to the epicentre, nuclear experts believe China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where the communist giant stores nuclear arms. The free world may take some time to grasp the gravity of situation and assess fallout of radioactivity resulting from forceful earth tremors. China’s nuclear installations are presently being monitored for the evidence of leaked radioactive materials which still have the chances of being released in the event of damage. US and other nations having spy satellites in outer space and other means are looking for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape. Experts believe that a radioactive leak could cause environmental harm that includes safety of drinking water and other related secondary environmental devastations. Internal damage could be found out only after the debris is finally cleared from affected locations. The damage to these installations could prove to be a serious set back to China's nuclear modernization and super power ambitions. Given the effects of 7.9-magnitude quake, possibility of damage cannot be ruled out which makes it potentially a serious issue. Nuclear experts are of the view that there were distinct likelihood of significant damage occurring at the plants. One can take a cue from the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that shook the world’s largest power plant in Japan last year. The tremors caused a fire in a transistor, led to the leak of water with low radioactivity, and prompted the automatic shutdown of the reactors. Japanese found more than 50 problems had been caused by the earthquake. Most were minor, but a serious one involved 100 drums of radioactive waste that fell over. The lids on some of them opened the contents spilled out. The transparent Japanese shared the information with rest of the world and IAEA enabling other nations to take remedial measures if need be. IAEA experts examined the site and submitted a detailed report to the Japanese authorities. However in case of China where the earth tremors were of much higher intensity, international community has been kept in the dark. The severe earthquake has raised new concerns about the safety of China’s covert nuclear activity. It is high time that the People’s Republic which reportedly ignored prior warnings issued by China’s seismologists on the impending catastrophe, comes out of its highly secretive cocoon. It not only should share relevant information with other nations including IAEA but also should invite nuclear scientists from all over world to inspect the damaged sites. After all earthquakes are natural calamities and can occur anywhere in the world. As more and more countries have started banking for their energy needs on nuclear power plants, the useful lessons on safety learnt from quake damages in China’s Sichuan province can be of immense help in preventing dangerous radio-active fallout and related harmful effects on environment.