Category Archives: Energy-Environment

The Ominous Rise of a Thirsty Dragon

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A Chinese dam under construction.

Brahma Chellaney
Times of India, August 7, 2011

China, the geographical hub of Asia, is the source of transboundary-river flows to the largest number of countries in the world — from Russia to India, and from Kazakhstan to the Indochina Peninsula. This unique status is because of its forcible absorption of sprawling ethnic-minority homelands, which make up 60% of its landmass and are the origin of all the important international rivers flowing out of Chinese-held territory.

Getting this pre-eminent riparian power to accept water-sharing arrangements or other cooperative institutional mechanisms has proven unsuccessful in any basin. In fact, as epitomized by its planned or actual construction of a separate cascade of upstream dams on several major international rivers, including the Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Arun, Irtysh-Illy, and Amur, China is increasingly headed in the opposite direction — toward unilateralist actions impervious to the concerns of downstream nations.

No country in history has been a greater dam builder than China, which boasts not only the world’s biggest dam (Three Gorges) but also more total number of dams than the rest of the world combined. Yet far from slowing its dam-building spree, China has stepped up its re-engineering of river flows in two ways: by portentously shifting its focus from internal rivers to international rivers, and by concentrating on mega-dams.

For example, its newest dams on the Mekong are the 4,200-megawatt Xiaowan — taller than Paris’s Eiffel Tower and producing more electricity than the installed hydropower-generating capacity of all of the lower Mekong countries together — and the 5,850-megawatt Nuozhadu, which when complete will be even bigger in storage volume but not in height.

Last summer, China’s state-run hydropower industry published a map of major new dams approved for construction, including one on the Brahmaputra at Metog (or “Motuo” in Chinese) that will be larger than even the 18,300-megawatt Three Gorges. India’s largest dam — the 2,000-megawatt Tehri — pales in comparison with China’s dams.

In the next one decade, according to international projections, the number of dams in the developed countries is likely to remain about the same, while much of the dam building in the developing world, in terms of aggregate storage-capacity buildup, will be concentrated in just one country — China.

The consequences of such frenetic construction are already visible. First, China is now involved in water disputes with almost all its riparian neighbours, ranging from big Russia and India to weak clients like North Korea and Myanmar.

Second, its new focus on water mega-projects in the traditional homelands of ethnic minorities has triggered fresh tensions along ethnic fault lines over displacement and submergence issues at a time when the Tibetan plateau, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have all been racked by revolts or protests against Chinese rule. And third, Chinese projects threaten to extend the serious degradation of internal rivers to international rivers.

Yet, as if to underpin its rise as the world’s unrivalled hydro-hegemon, China is also the largest dam builder overseas. From Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to Myanmar’s troubled Kachin and Shan states, China has widened its dam building to disputed or insurgency-torn areas, even in the face of local backlash. While PLA units are engaged in dam and other strategic projects in restive Gilgit-Baltistan, China’s dam building inside Myanmar has contributed to renewed bloody fighting recently, ending a 17-year ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army and the government.

For downriver countries, a key concern is China’s opacity on its hydro-engineering projects. It usually begins work quietly, almost furtively, and then presents a project as holding transboundary flood-control benefits and as an unalterable fait accompli.

Worse still, China rejects the very notion of a water-sharing arrangement or treaty with any riparian neighbour. The terms “water sharing,” “shared water resources,” “treaty” and “common norms and rules” are an anathema to it. It is one of only three countries that voted against the 1997 UN Convention, which lays down rules on shared basin resources.

It is thus no accident that there are treaties among co-riparian states in South and Southeast Asia, but not between China and any of its neighbours. That the country with a throttlehold over the headwaters of major Asian rivers is also a rising superpower, whose muscular confidence is increasingly on open display, only compounds the regional security challenges.

In this light, China poses the single biggest obstacle to the building of institutionalized cooperation in Asia to harness internationally shared rivers for mutual and sustainable benefit.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

(c) Times of India, 2011.

False Promise of Nuclear Energy

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Nuclear power no solution

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The Japan Times, March 23, 2011
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Just when nuclear energy had come to be seen as part of the solution to energy and global-warming challenges, the serial reactor incidents in Fukushima have dealt a severe blow to the world nuclear-power industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms.

Even before the Fukushima No. 1 plant become the site of the world’s worst accident since Chernobyl, the share of nuclear power in worldwide electricity production had been stagnant for a quarter-century. In fact, after being constant at 16 to 17 percent from 1986 to 2005, the contribution of nuclear power in global electricity actually has dropped to 14 percent since then.

International studies have shown that nuclear power, although a 50-year-old mature technology, has demonstrated the slowest “rate of learning” in comparison to other energy sources, including newer technologies such as wind power and combined-cycle gas turbines. Nuclear power remains highly capital-intensive. It has high up-front capital costs, long lead times for construction and commissioning, and drawn-out amortization periods that put off private investors.

The industry’s trumpeting of a global nuclear renaissance thus has been premature. But after Fukushima, the attraction of nuclear power is likely to dim worldwide. Inherently risky, water-intensive and vulnerable to natural disasters, nuclear-power plants will now face greater public scrutiny.

Many nuclear-power reactors are located along coastlines because they are highly water-intensive. Yet natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, and tsunami are becoming more common, owing to climate change, which will also cause a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

For example, many nuclear-power plants located along the British coast are just a few meters above sea level. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused significant damage at the Turkey Point nuclear-power plant on Biscayne Bay, Florida, but, fortunately, not to any critical system.

All energy generators, including coal- and gas-fired plants, make major demands on water resources. But nuclear power requires even more. Light-water reactors (LWRs) like those in Japan and the United States, which use water as their main coolant, produce most of the world’s nuclear power. The huge quantities of local water that LWRs use for their operations become hot-water outflows, which are pumped back into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Because reactors located inland put serious strain on local freshwater resources — including greater damage to plant life and fish — water-stressed countries that are not landlocked try to find suitable seashore sites. But whether located inland or on a coast, nuclear power is vulnerable to the likely effects of climate change.

As global warming brings about a rise in temperatures and ocean levels, inland reactors will increasingly contribute to, and be affected by, water shortages. During the 2003 heat wave in France, operations at 17 nuclear reactors had to be scaled back or stopped because of rapidly rising temperatures in rivers and lake.

Paradoxically, the very conditions that made it impossible for the nuclear industry to deliver full power in Europe in 2003 and 2006 created peak demand for electricity, owing to the increased use of air conditioning.

Indeed, during the 2003 heat wave, Electricite de France, which operates 58 reactors — the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers like the Loire — was compelled to buy power on the European spot market. The state-owned EDF, which normally exports power, ended up paying 10 times the price of domestic power, incurring a financial cost of 300 million euro.

Similarly, water and heat problems caused by a heat wave in 2006 forced Germany, Spain, and France to take some nuclear power plants offline and reduce operations at others. Highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear power to environmental change or extreme-weather patterns, in 2006 plant operators in Western Europe also secured exemptions from environmental regulations so that they could discharge overheated water into natural ecosystems — an action that affected fisheries.

France likes to showcase its nuclear power industry, which supplies 78 percent of the country’s electricity. But such is the nuclear industry’s water intensity that EDF withdraws up to 19 billion cubic meters of water per year from rivers and lakes, or roughly half of France’s total freshwater consumption. Freshwater scarcity is a growing international challenge, and the vast majority of countries are in no position to approve of such highly water-intensive inland-based energy systems.

Seaside nuclear plants do not face similar problems in hot conditions because ocean waters do not heat up anywhere near as rapidly as rivers or lakes. And because they rely on seawater, they cause no freshwater scarcity. But as the Fukushima reactors have shown, coastal nuclear-power plants confront more serious dangers.

When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, it flooded India’s Madras Atomic Power Station. But the reactor core could be kept in a safe shutdown mode because the electrical systems had been installed on higher ground than the plant itself. But unlike Fukushima, the Indian plant did not bear the direct tsunami impact.

The central dilemma of nuclear power in an increasingly water-stressed world is that it is a water guzzler, yet vulnerable to water. And decades after Lewis L. Strauss, the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Agency, claimed that nuclear power would become “too cheap to meter,” the nuclear industry still subsists on munificent government subsidies.

While the appeal of nuclear power has declined considerably in the West, it has grown among the so-called nuclear newcomers, which brings with it new proliferation and safety challenges. Moreover, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population living within 100 km of a coastline, finding suitable seaside sites for initiation or expansion of a nuclear-power program is no longer easy.

Without a breakthrough in fusion energy or greater commercial advances in breeder (and thorium) reactors, nuclear power is in no position to lead the world out of the fossil-fuel age. In fact, Fukushima is likely to stunt the appeal of nuclear power in a way similar to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of “Nuclear Proliferation” (Longman, 1993) and “Water: Asia’s New Battlefield” (Georgetown University Press, forthcoming).

The Japan Times: March 23, 2011
(C) All rights reserved

A blow to the global nuclear-power industry

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Fukushima blast shows nuclear is not the answer

Inherently risky, water-intensive and unreliable — we must admit we cannot depend on nuclear power

Brahma Chellaney
guardian.co.uk, 15 March 2011
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The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant — and other reactors — in earthquake-hit Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms that have been trumpeting a nuclear-power renaissance.

But the risks that seaside reactors like Fukushima face from natural disasters are well-known. Indeed, they became evident six years ago, when the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 inundated India’s second-largest nuclear complex, shutting down the Madras power station.

Many nuclear-power plants are located along coastlines, because they are highly water-intensive. Yet natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis are becoming more common, owing to climate change, which will also cause a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

For example, many nuclear-power plants located along the British coast are just a few metres above sea level. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused significant damage at the Turkey Point nuclear-power plant on Biscayne Bay, Florida, but, fortunately, not to any critical systems.

All energy generators, including coal- and gas-fired plants, make major demands on water resources. But nuclear power requires even more. Light-water reactors (LWRs) like those at Fukushima, which use water as a primary coolant, produce most of the world’s nuclear power. The huge quantities of local water that LWRs consume for their operations become hot-water outflows, which are pumped back into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Because reactors located inland put serious strain on local freshwater resources — including greater damage to plant life and fish — water-stressed countries that are not landlocked try to find suitable seashore sites. But, whether located inland or on a coast, nuclear power is vulnerable to the likely effects of climate change.

As global warming brings about a rise in average temperatures and ocean levels, inland reactors will increasingly contribute to, and be affected by, water shortages. During the record-breaking 2003 heatwave in France, operations at 17 commercial nuclear reactors had to be scaled back or stopped because of rapidly rising temperatures in rivers and lakes. Spain’s reactor at Santa María de Garoña was shut for a week in July 2006 after high temperatures were recorded in the Ebro river.

Paradoxically, then, the very conditions that made it impossible for the nuclear industry to deliver full power in Europe in 2003 and 2006 created peak demand for electricity, as use of air-conditioning increased.

During the 2003 heat wave, Électricité de France, which operates 58 reactors — the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers such as the Loire — was compelled to buy power from neighboring countries on the European spot market. The state-owned EDF, which normally exports power, ended up paying 10 times the price of domestic power, incurring a financial cost of €300m.

Similarly, although the 2006 European heatwave was less intense, water and heat problems forced Germany, Spain, and France to take some nuclear power plants offline and reduce operations at others. Highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear power to environmental change or extreme-weather patterns, in 2006 plant operators in western Europe also secured exemptions from regulations that would have prevented them from discharging overheated water into natural ecosystems, affecting fisheries.

France likes to showcase its nuclear power industry, which supplies 78% of the country’s electricity. But such is the nuclear industry’s water intensity that EDF withdraws up to 19bn cubic metres of water per year from rivers and lakes, or roughly half of France’s total freshwater consumption. Freshwater scarcity is a growing international challenge, and the vast majority of countries are in no position to approve of such highly water-intensive inland-based energy systems.

Nuclear plants located by the sea do not face similar problems in hot conditions, because ocean waters do not heat up anywhere near as rapidly as rivers or lakes. And, because they rely on seawater, they cause no freshwater scarcity. But as Japan’s reactors have shown, coastal nuclear-power plants confront more serious dangers.

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, the Madras reactor’s core could be kept in safe shutdown condition because the electrical systems had been ingeniously installed on higher ground than the plant itself. And, unlike Fukushima, which bore a direct impact, Madras was far away from the epicenter of the earthquake that unleashed the tsunami.

The central dilemma of nuclear power in an increasingly water-stressed world is that it is a water-guzzler, yet vulnerable to water. And, decades after Lewis L Strauss, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Agency, claimed that nuclear power would become “too cheap to meter”, the nuclear industry everywhere still subsists on government subsidies.

While the appeal of nuclear power has declined considerably in the west, it has grown among the so-called “nuclear newcomers”, which brings with it new challenges, including concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population living within 100km of a coastline, finding suitable seaside sites for initiation or expansion of a nuclear-power programme is no longer easy.

Fukushima is likely to stunt the appeal of nuclear power in a way similar to the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 did, not to mention the far more severe meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. If the fallout from those incidents is a reliable guide, however, nuclear power’s advocates will eventually be back.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Fukushima nos recuerda las debilidades y amenazas de las centrales nucleares en el mundo

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TRIBUNA: BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Moraleja nuclear de Japón
Muchas centrales nucleares están situadas en las costas, porque necesitan una gran cantidad de agua. Sin embargo, los desastres naturales y el cambio climático hacen que resulten aún más vulnerables
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
El Pais, 17/03/2011

Los problemas de la central nuclear de Fukushima -y de otros reactores- en el noroeste de Japón han asestado un duro golpe a la industria nuclear mundial, poderoso cartel de menos de una docena de importantes empresas de propiedad u orientación estatal que han estado pregonando un renacimiento de la energía nuclear.

Pero ya se conocen perfectamente los riesgos que corren los reactores costeros, como el de Fukushima, a consecuencia de desastres naturales. De hecho, resultaron evidentes hace seis años, cuando el maremoto habido en el océano Índico en diciembre de 2004 inundó el segundo complejo nuclear en importancia de India, con lo que quedó desconectada la central eléctrica de Madrás.

Muchas centrales nucleares están situadas a lo largo de las costas, porque en ellas se utiliza una gran cantidad de agua. Sin embargo, desastres naturales como las tormentas, los huracanes y los maremotos están resultando más frecuentes a causa del cambio climático, que también causará una elevación del nivel de los océanos, con lo que los reactores costeros resultarán aún más vulnerables.

Por ejemplo, muchas centrales nucleares situadas a lo largo de la costa británica están a tan solo unos metros por encima del nivel del mar. En 1992, el huracán Andrew causó importantes daños en la central nuclear de Turkey Point, en la bahía de Biscayne (Florida), pero no así, por fortuna, a ninguno de los sistemas decisivos para su funcionamiento.

Todos los generadores de energía, incluidas las centrales alimentadas con carbón o gas, requieren grandes cantidades de recursos hídricos, pero la energía nuclear más aún. Los reactores de agua ligera, como los de Fukushima, que utilizan el agua como refrigerante primordial, son los que producen la mayor parte de la energía nuclear. Las enormes cantidades de agua local que dichos reactores consumen para sus operaciones pasan a ser corrientes de agua caliente, que se bombean a los ríos, los lagos y los océanos.

Como los reactores situados en zonas del interior ejercen una grave presión sobre los recursos de agua dulce, incluidos daños mayores a la vida vegetal y a los peces, los países que tienen litoral y padecen escasez de agua procuran buscar emplazamientos costeros adecuados, pero, ya tengan o no litoral, la energía nuclear es vulnerable a los probables efectos del cambio climático.

A medida que el calentamiento planetario provoque un aumento de las temperaturas medias y del nivel de los océanos, los reactores situados en el interior contribuirán cada vez más a la escasez de agua y resultarán afectados por ella. Durante la ola de calor sin precedentes de 2003 en Francia, hubo que reducir o detener las operaciones en 17 reactores nucleares comerciales a causa del rápido aumento de las temperaturas de los ríos y los lagos. En julio de 2006, hubo que desconectar el reactor de Santa María de Garoña (España) durante una semana, después de que se registraran altas temperaturas en el río Ebro.

Así, pues, las propias condiciones que en 2003 y 2006 impidieron a la industria nuclear suministrar toda la energía necesaria en Europa fueron, paradójicamente, las que crearon una demanda máxima de electricidad a causa de un aumento de la utilización del aire acondicionado.

De hecho, durante la ola de calor de 2003, Électricité de France, que tiene 58 reactores en funcionamiento -la mayoría de ellos en ríos ecológicamente delicados, como el Loira- se vio obligada a comprar electricidad a los países vecinos en el mercado europeo al contado. EDF, empresa de propiedad estatal que normalmente exporta electricidad, acabó pagándola a un precio 10 veces mayor, con un coste financiero de 300 millones de euros.

Asimismo, aunque la ola de calor europea de 2006 fue menos intensa, los problemas de agua y calor obligaron a España, Alemania y Francia a desconectar algunas centrales nucleares y reducir las operaciones de otras. En 2006 las empresas propietarias de centrales nucleares de Europa occidental consiguieron también exenciones para incumplir la reglamentación que les habría impedido descargar agua recalentada en los ecosistemas naturales, lo que afectó a la pesca.

Francia gusta de exhibir su industria de energía nuclear, que suministra el 78% de la electricidad del país, pero la intensidad del consumo de agua de dicha industria es tal, que EDF retira todos los años 19.000 millones de metros cúbicos de agua de los ríos y lagos, es decir, la mitad, aproximadamente, del consumo total de agua dulce de Francia. La escasez de agua dulce es una amenaza internacional cada vez mayor y la inmensa mayoría de los países no están en condiciones de aprobar el emplazamiento en el interior de semejantes sistemas energéticos que hacen un consumo tan elevado de agua.

Las centrales nucleares situadas junto al mar no afrontan problemas similares en situaciones de calor, porque el agua de los océanos no se calienta ni mucho menos con la misma rapidez que la de los ríos o los lagos y, al contar con el agua del mar, no provocan escasez de agua dulce, pero, como han demostrado los reactores del Japón, las centrales nucleares costeras afrontan peligros más graves.

Cuando el núcleo del reactor de Madrás resultó afectado por el maremoto del océano Índico, se pudo mantenerlo a salvo desconectado, porque se había tenido la previsión de instalar los sistemas eléctricos en un terreno más alto que la propia central y, a diferencia de lo ocurrido en Fukushima, que recibió un impacto directo, la central de Madrás estaba alejada del epicentro del terremoto que desencadenó el maremoto.

El dilema fundamental de la energía nuclear en un mundo cada vez más afectado por la escasez de agua es el de que necesita enormes cantidades de agua y, sin embargo, es vulnerable ante el agua y, decenios después de que Lewis L. Strauss, el presidente del Organismo de Energía Atómica de Estados Unidos, afirmara que la energía nuclear llegaría a ser “demasiado barata para medirla con contador”, la industria nuclear sigue subsistiendo en todas partes gracias a muníficas subvenciones estatales.

Aunque el atractivo de la energía nuclear ha disminuido considerablemente en Occidente, ha aumentado entre los llamados “recién llegados nucleares”, con el acompañamiento de nuevas amenazas, incluida la preocupación por la proliferación de armas nucleares. Además, cuando casi dos quintas partes de la población mundial viven a menos de 100 kilómetros de una costa, ya no resulta fácil encontrar emplazamientos costeros adecuados para iniciar o ampliar un programa de energía nuclear.

Es probable que lo sucedido en Fukushima afecte irremisiblemente a la energía nuclear de forma similar al accidente en la central de Three Mile Island en Pensilvania en 1979, por no hablar de la fusión, mucho más grave, del reactor de Chernóbil en 1986. Sin embargo, a juzgar por lo sucedido después de aquellos accidentes, los defensores de la energía nuclear acabarán volviendo a la carga.

India’s nuclear-reactor imports a giant scandal in the making

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The spectre of India’s Fukushimas

The creeping rot in the country’s nuclear power projects could see Japan’s troubles re-enacted on India’s shores
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Brahma Chellaney
Mint, March 17, 2011

The controversial Indo-US nuclear deal was pushed through without building “the broadest possible national consensus” that the prime minister had promised. Now, the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan is helping to turn the spotlight on India’s nuclear safety and its moves to push through major reactor imports without a competitive bidding process.

These multibillion-dollar imports constitute a giant scandal in the making, with long-term safety implications. Take the plan to install 9,900 MW of nuclear-generated capacity at Jaitapur: Not only was the environmental impact assessment hurriedly approved, coercive efforts are also being made to acquire land to allow France’s Areva to build six reactors—none of these of a type operational anywhere. It is only after the serial incidents at Japan’s six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi plant that India’s nuclear chief has acknowledged the need for an earthquake- and tsunami-related safety evaluation of Areva’s reactor model. Why wasn’t this done before reserving Jaitapur for Areva?

To be sure, India must ramp up its electricity production from all energy sources. This does not preclude the need for safe and cost-competitive nuclear power. Yet the government is acquiring land, without any competitive bidding, on behalf of four chosen foreign vendors. A nuclear park has first been earmarked for each foreign firm and only then, once leverage has been undercut, have prices sought to be negotiated. The import contracts, while making France, Russia and the US major commercial beneficiaries, herald a monsoon of potential kickbacks for corrupt politicians. Such an unabashedly rigged process beats even the 2G telecom scandal.

Given this perversity, is it surprising that the costs of imported generating capacity will be almost double the $1.77 million per installed MW of new indigenous capacity? Worse still, the foreign vendors—in addition to their accident liability having been capped by special legislation—are being freed from the task of producing electricity at marketable rates. The reactors will be owned and operated by the state, with the Indian taxpayer bigheartedly subsidizing the high-priced electricity generated. For the foreign vendors, there is no downside risk—only profits to reap.

Yet for India, there is a clear risk that the nuclear deal, with $150 billion worth of total potential import contracts, could end up as the single largest money-making scheme ever unveiled. After all, contract-making, along with policy changes, serves as the main engine of big-bucks corruption—a situation that has fostered high import dependency and made India the only major exception in Asia to the continent’s model of export-driven economic growth.

India’s imported plants—the US-built Tarapur and the much-delayed, Russian-supplied Kundankulam—are located by the ocean, as are all the new nuclear parks. All the foreign-origin plants, including the planned imports, are light water reactors (LWRs). These, with their once-through cooling process, are the greatest water guzzlers in the world. Building LWRs inland in water-stressed India is thus not a viable option. But despite a large coastline, India has no suitable vacant seaside sites for LWRs. Building nuclear plants by the seashore thus means displacing residents and running into grassroots opposition, as symbolized by Jaitapur, Haripur and Mithi Virdi. And as the late-2004 Indian Ocean tsunami showed by inundating and shutting down the Madras Atomic Power Station, seaside reactors are vulnerable to natural disasters. This could be a serious concern going forward: A climate change-driven paradigm will not only make storms, hurricanes and tsunamis more frequent, but also lead to a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

India’s transition from a largely indigenous capacity to a heavily import-based programme will mean dependence on foreign vendors even for critical safety-related replacement parts. India today boasts the world’s oldest operating Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) at Tarapur. General Electric, which built the Tarapur plant, also supplied the BWRs at the heart of the Fukushima crisis. With Germany now deciding to shut down all seven of its pre-1980 nuclear plants at least till June, India can expect to come under pressure for still operating the 1969-vintage Tarapur.

Yet such are nuclear power’s inherent risks that the Fukushima disaster centres on reactors that were shut down. The explosions in reactor buildings and fires at spent-fuel ponds there highlight two other dangers in India: The decision to build six or more reactors in close proximity at each park, and the discharged fuel accumulating at Tarapur for four decades because the US refuses to take it back or allow India to reprocess it.

The spectre of India’s own Fukushimas is also being raised by the planned import of four different types of LWR technology, which will make the country’s nuclear power programme the most diverse in the world. This diversity may obviate reliance on one supplier, but it will also make India’s safety responsibilities extremely complex and onerous, given the multiplicity of reactor designs already in place. After all, it takes a long time to create teams of experienced safety engineers for any reactor model.

Fukushima is a warning that India must not compromise on long-term nuclear safety. The country deserves transparency and open debate—an imperative underlined by the pervasive corruption, the creeping politicization of top nuclear officials, and the rise of the corporate nuclear lobby.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
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The paradox of nuclear power: A water-guzzling technology, yet very vulnerable to water

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Japan’s Nuclear Morality Tale

Brahma Chellaney
Project Syndicate

The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant — and other reactors — in northeast Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms that have been trumpeting a nuclear-power renaissance.

But the risks that seaside reactors like Fukushima face from natural disasters are well known. Indeed, they became evident six years ago, when the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 inundated India’s second-largest nuclear complex, shutting down the Madras power station.

Many nuclear-power plants are located along coastlines, because they are highly water-intensive. Yet natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis are becoming more common, owing to climate change, which will also cause a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

For example, many nuclear-power plants located along the British coast are just a few meters above sea level. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused significant damage at the Turkey Point nuclear-power plant on Biscayne Bay, Florida, but, fortunately, not to any critical systems.

All energy generators, including coal- and gas-fired plants, make major demands on water resources. But nuclear power requires even more. Light-water reactors (LWRs) like those at Fukushima, which use water as a primary coolant, produce most of the world’s nuclear power. The huge quantities of local water that LWRs consume for their operations become hot-water outflows, which are pumped back into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Because reactors located inland put serious strain on local freshwater resources — including greater damage to plant life and fish — water-stressed countries that are not landlocked try to find suitable seashore sites. But, whether located inland or on a coast, nuclear power is vulnerable to the likely effects of climate change.

As global warming brings about a rise in average temperatures and ocean levels, inland reactors will increasingly contribute to, and be affected by, water shortages. During the record-breaking 2003 heat wave in France, operations at 17 commercial nuclear reactors had to be scaled back or stopped because of rapidly rising temperatures in rivers and lake. Spain’s reactor at Santa María de Garoña was shut for a week in July 2006 after high temperatures were recorded in the Ebro River.

Paradoxically, then, the very conditions that made it impossible for the nuclear industry to deliver full power in Europe in 2003 and 2006 created peak demand for electricity, owing to the increased use of air conditioning.

Indeed, during the 2003 heat wave, Électricité de France, which operates 58 reactors — the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers like the Loire — was compelled to buy power from neighboring countries on the European spot market. The state-owned EDF, which normally exports power, ended up paying 10 times the price of domestic power, incurring a financial cost of €300 million.

Similarly, although the 2006 European heat wave was less intense, water and heat problems forced Germany, Spain, and France to take some nuclear power plants offline and reduce operations at others. Highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear power to environmental change or extreme-weather patterns, in 2006 plant operators in Western Europe also secured exemptions from regulations that would have prevented them from discharging overheated water into natural ecosystems, affecting fisheries.

France likes to showcase its nuclear power industry, which supplies 78% of the country’s electricity. But such is the nuclear industry’s water intensity that EDF withdraws up to 19 billion cubic meters of water per year from rivers and lakes, or roughly half of France’s total freshwater consumption. Freshwater scarcity is a growing international challenge, and the vast majority of countries are in no position to approve of such highly water-intensive inland-based energy systems.

Nuclear plants located by the sea do not face similar problems in hot conditions, because ocean waters do not heat up anywhere near as rapidly as rivers or lakes. And, because they rely on seawater, they cause no freshwater scarcity. But, as Japan’s reactors have shown, coastal nuclear-power plants confront more serious dangers.

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, the Madras reactor’s core could be kept in safe shutdown condition because the electrical systems had been ingeniously installed on higher ground than the plant itself. And, unlike Fukushima, which bore a direct impact, Madras was far away from the epicenter of the earthquake that unleashed the tsunami.

The central dilemma of nuclear power in an increasingly water-stressed world is that it is a water guzzler, yet vulnerable to water. And, decades after Lewis L. Strauss, the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Agency, claimed that nuclear power would become “too cheap to meter,” the nuclear industry everywhere still subsists on munificent government subsidies.

While the appeal of nuclear power has declined considerably in the West, it has grown among the so-called “nuclear newcomers,” which brings with it new challenges, including concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population living within 100 kilometers of a coastline, finding suitable seaside sites for initiation or expansion of a nuclear-power program is no longer easy.

Fukushima is likely to stunt the appeal of nuclear power in a way similar to the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, not to mention the far more severe meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. If the fallout from those incidents is a reliable guide, however, nuclear power’s advocates will eventually be back.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan (Harper Paperbacks, 2010) and Water: Asia’s New Battlefield (Georgetown University Press, 2011).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.

China’s Murky Hydropolitics

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Ties and Troubled Waters

 

China’s hydro-engineering projects in Tibet indicate it is fashioning water as a card against India

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, June 29, 2010

 

New evidence from China indicates that, as part of its planned diversion of the waters of the Brahmaputra, preparations are afoot to start work on the world’s biggest dam at the river’s so-called Great Bend, located at Tibet’s corner with northeastern India. The dam, by impounding water on a gargantuan scale, will generate, according to a latest map of planned dams put up on its Web site by the state-run Hydro China, 38,000 megawatts of power, or more than twice the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. Such is its scale that this new dam will by itself produce the equivalent of 25 percent of India’s current electricity generation from all sources. 

 

Water is becoming a key security issue in Sino-Indian relations and a potential source of enduring discord. China and India already are water-stressed economies. The spread of irrigated farming and water-intensive industries, together with the demands of a rising middle class, have led to a severe struggle for more water. Indeed, both countries have entered an era of perennial water scarcity, which before long is likely to equal, in terms of per capita availability, the water shortages found in the Middle East.

 

Rapid economic growth could slow in the face of acute scarcity if demand for water continues to grow at its current frantic pace, turning China and India — both food-sufficient countries by and large — into major importers, a development that would accentuate the global food crisis. Even though India has more arable land than China — 160.5 million hectares compared to 137.1 million hectares — the source of most major Indian rivers is Chinese-controlled Tibet. The Tibetan plateau’s vast glaciers, huge underground springs and high altitude make Tibet the world’s largest freshwater repository. Indeed, all of Asia’s major rivers, except the Ganges, originate in the Chinese-held Tibetan plateau. Even the Ganges’ main tributaries flow in from Tibet.

 

But China is now pursuing major inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects on the Tibetan plateau, which threaten to diminish international-river flows into India and other co-riparian states. China’s opaquely pursued hydro-engineering projects in Tibet threaten the interests of India more than those of any other country. The greatest impact of the diversion of the Brahmaputra waters, however, would probably be borne by Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra is Bangladesh’s most-important river, and the Chinese diversion would mean environmental devastation of large parts of Bangladesh. In fact, China is presently pursuing a separate cascade of major dams on the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra and the Irtysh-Illy, pitting it in water disputes with most of its riparian neighbours — from Kazakhstan and Russia to India and the countries of Indochina Peninsula.

 

In March 2009, the chairman of the Tibetan regional government unveiled plans for major new dams on the Brahmaputra. A series of six big dams will come up in the upper-middle reaches of the Brahmaputra, to the southeast of Lhasa, with construction of the first — Zangmu — beginning in 2009 itself. As part of this cascade, four other new dams will come up downstream from Zangmu at Jiacha, Lengda, Zhongda and Langzhen. The sixth, at Jiexu, is upstream to Zangmu. This cascade is in addition to the more than a dozen smaller dams China already has built on the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, including at Yamdrok Tso, Pangduo, Nyingtri-Payi and Drikong.

 

The most ominous plan China is pursuing is the one to reroute a sizable chunk of the Brahmaputra waters northwards at the Great Bend, the point where the river makes a sharp turn to enter India, creating in the process a canyon larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon in the US. The rapid infrastructure work in this area is clearly geared at such water diversion and hydropower generation. In fact, a new Chinese State Grid map showing that the Great Bend area will soon be connected to the rest of China’s power supply is a pointer to the impending launch of work on the mammoth dam there — a scheme recently supported by leaders of China’s state-run hydropower industry, including Zhang Boting, the deputy general secretary of the Chinese Society for Hydropower Engineering.

 

Through its giant projects in Tibet, China is actually set to acquire the capability to fashion water as a political weapon against India. Such a weapon can be put to overt use in war or employed subtly in peacetime so that the level of cross-border water flows becomes a function of political concession.

 

With China determined to exploit its riparian dominance, New Delhi’s self-injurious acceptance of Tibet as part of China is becoming more apparent. Just as India has retreated to an increasingly defensive position territorially, with the spotlight on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal Pradesh than on Tibet’s status itself, New Delhi’s policy straitjacket precludes an Indian diplomatic campaign against Beijing’s dam-building projects. Accepting Tibet and the developments there as China’s “internal” affairs has proven a huge misstep that will continue to exact increasing costs. A bold, forward-looking leadership, though, can rectify any past mistake before it becomes too late.

 

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Asia’s Water Crisis: Strategic Implications

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Water emerges as a potential constraint on Asia’s rapid
growth

Brahma Chellaney

The Sunday Guardian, May 9, 2010

As the most-pressing resource, water holds the strategic
key to peace, public health and prosperity. With its availability coming under
pressure in many parts of the world due to greater industrial, agricultural and
household demands, water is likely to serve as the defining crisis of the
21st century. This is most evident when one looks at Asia, the world’s largest
continent.

In Asia, growing populations, rising affluence, changing
diets and the demands of development already are already putting strain on two
resources linked to climate change. One is energy, the main contributor to the
buildup of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the other is
water, whose availability will be seriously affected by climate change,
increasing the likelihood of water-related conflicts there, as the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

The sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven
in part by high GDP growth rates and
in part by mercantilist attempts to
lock up supplies, has obscured the other danger — that water shortages
in much of Asia are
becoming a threat to rapid economic
modernization, prompting the
building of upstream
hydro-engineering projects on transnational rivers, with little concern for the
interests of co-riparian states. If water geopolitics were to spur
interstate tensions through reduced
water flows to neighboring countries, the Asian renaissance could stall in the
face of inter-riparian conflicts.

Today, no region better
illustrates the dangers of water wars in the future than Asia, which has less
fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any other continent, according to a 2006 United Nations report. This fact often
gets obscured by the spotlight on the sharpening energy competition. Indeed, at
a time when the assertive pursuit of national interest has begun to replace ideology, idealism and
morality in international relations, there is a danger that
interstate conflict in Asia
in the coming years could be driven by competition not so much
over political influence as over
scarce resources.

The UN report has pointed
out that when the estimated reserves of lakes, rivers and groundwater are added
up, Asia has marginally less water
per person than Europe or Africa, one-quarter that of North America, nearly
one-tenth that of South America and 20 times less than Australia and Pacific
islands. Yet Asia is home to almost 60 percent
of the world’s population.

In Asia, two broad water-related effects of climate change
can be visualized. First, climate change is likely to intensify interstate and intrastate competition over water resources. That
in turn could trigger resource
conflicts within and between states,
and open new (or exacerbate existing)
political disputes. Second, the likely increased frequency of extreme weather
events like hurricanes, droughts and flooding, as well as the rise of ocean levels, are likely
to spur greater interstate and
intrastate migration — especially of
the poor and the vulnerable — from delta and coastal regions to the
hinterland. Such an influx of outsiders would socially swamp
inland areas, upsetting the existing fragile ethnic balance and provoking a backlash that strains internal and regional security. Through such
large-scale migration, the political stability and internal cohesion of some nations could be
undermined. In some cases, this could
even foster or strengthen conditions that could make the state dysfunctional.

In water-deficient
Asia, most societies are agrarian, and the
demand for water for farming is soaring. Asia’s
rapid industrialization and
urbanization, additionally, are boosting demand for water considerably.

Household water consumption
in Asia is also rising rapidly, but such is the water paucity that not
many Asians can aspire for the lifestyle of Americans, who daily use 400 liters
per person, or more than 2.5 times the average in Asia.
Agriculture, however, remains the major consumer of water. Some three-fourths of
all water withdrawals in Asia are for
agriculture.

Asis’s vast irrigation
systems helped usher in the Green Revolution. Today, irrigated croplands produce
60 percent of Asia’s rice, wheat and other
staple food grains. But in a new era of growing water shortages, the
water-intensive and wasteful nature of Asian irrigation practices are becoming
apparent, including the growing of rice in saturated paddy fields, old and
inefficient irrigation canals and the widespread use of electric and diesel
pumps to recklessly extract groundwater.

Add to this picture the
fast-rising demand for food in Asia. But to
grow more food will require more water — a resource now under the greatest
strain. Pollution, too, is threatening Asia’s
freshwater resources.

The spread of prosperity is
changing diets in Asia, with people tending to
eat less grain and more meat, dairy products and fruit as they rise to the
middle class. In China, for example, meat consumption
has doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to again double by 2035. A
shift from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet has helped double
East Asia’s “water footprint” for food
production since 1985, given the fact that it takes 12 times more water to grow
a kilogram of beef as compared to a kilogram of rice or wheat.

Take China and India, which
already are water-stressed economies.  As China and India
gain economic heft, they are increasingly drawing international attention. The
two demographic titans are coming
into their own at the same time
in history, helping to highlight the
ongoing major shifts in global politics and economy.  However, when one
examines natural endowments — such as arable land, water resources, mineral
deposits, hydrocarbons and wetlands — the picture that emerges is not exactly
gratifying for India and
China.

The two giants have entered
an era of perennial water shortages, which are likely to parallel, in terms of
per-capita water availability, the scarcity in the Middle
East before long. India and China
face the prospect that their rapid economic modernization may stall due to
inadequate water resources. This prospect would become a reality if their
industrial, agricultural and household demand for water continues to grow at the
present frenetic pace.

Water presents a unique
challenge. While countries can scour the world for oil, natural gas and
minerals to keep their economic machines humming, water cannot be secured
through international trade deals. Sustainable and integrated management of
national water resources is essential to prevent degradation, depletion and
pollution of water. To meet the gap between supply and demand, water
conservation, water efficiency, rainwater capture, water recycling and drip
irrigation would have to be embraced at national, provincial and local levels.

One can hope that advances in clean-water
technologies would materialize before water conflicts flare.
Low-cost, energy-efficient technologies for treating and
recycling water could emerge from the scientific progress on nanoparticles and
nanofibres and membrane bioreactors. But until that becomes a reality, Asian
states have little choice but to upgrade their antiquated irrigation systems and
adopt more water-efficient agricultural practices.

How to salvage climate change negotiations

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EARTH IN THE BALANCE

Confronting the Geopolitics of Climate Change

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate

International climate-change negotiations are to be renewed this year. To be successful, they must heed the lessons of last December’s Copenhagen summit.

The first lesson is that climate change is a matter not only of science, but also of geopolitics. The expectation at Copenhagen that scientific research would trump geopolitics was misguided. Without an improved geopolitical strategy, there can be no effective fight against climate change.

The second lesson from Copenhagen is that to get a binding international agreement, there first must be a deal between the United States and China. These two countries are very dissimilar in many respects, but not in their carbon profiles: each accounts for between 22% and 24% of all human-generated greenhouse gases in the world. If a deal can be reached between the world’s two greatest polluting nations, which together are responsible for more than 46% of all greenhouse-gas emissions, an international accord on climate change would be easier to reach.

In Copenhagen, China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind small, poor countries and forging a negotiating alliance, known as the BASIC bloc, with three other major developing countries – India, Brazil, and South Africa. The BASIC bloc, however, is founded on political opportunism, and thus is unlikely to hold together for long. The carbon profiles of Brazil, India, South Africa, and China are wildly incongruent. For example, China’s per-capita carbon emissions are more than four times higher than India’s.

China rejects India’s argument that per-capita emission levels and historic contributions of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation. China, as the factory to the world, wants a formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to export industries. As soon as the struggle to define criteria for mitigation action commences in future negotiations, this alliance will quickly unravel.

A third lesson from Copenhagen is the need for a more realistic agenda. Too much focus has been put on carbon cuts for nearly two decades, almost to the exclusion of other elements. It is now time to disaggregate the climate-change agenda into smaller, more manageable parts. After all, a lot can be done without a binding agreement that sets national targets on carbon cuts.

Consider energy efficiency, which can help bring one-quarter of all gains in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Energy inefficiency is a problem not only in the Third World, but also in the developed world. The US, for instance, belches out twice as much CO2 per capita as Japan, although the two countries have fairly similar per-capita incomes.

Furthermore, given that deforestation accounts for as much as 20% of the emission problem, carbon storage is as important as carbon cuts. Each hectare of rainforest, for example, stores 500 tons of CO2. Forest conservation and management thus are crucial to tackling climate change. In fact, to help lessen the impact of climate change, states need to strategically invest in ecological restoration – growing and preserving rainforests, building wetlands, and shielding species critical to our ecosystems.

The international community must also focus on stemming man-made environmental change. Environmental change is distinct from climate change, although there is a tendency on the part of some enthusiasts to blur the distinction and turn global warming into a blame-all phenomenon.

Man-made environmental change is caused by reckless land use, overgrazing, depletion and contamination of surface freshwater resources, overuse of groundwater, degradation of coastal ecosystems, inefficient or environmentally unsustainable irrigation practices, waste mismanagement, and the destruction of natural habitats. Such environmental change has no link to global warming. Yet, ultimately, it will contribute to climate variation and thus must be stopped.

Climate change and environmental change, given their implications for resource security and social and economic stability, are clearly threat multipliers. While continuing to search for a binding international agreement, the international community should also explore innovative approaches, such as global public-private partnership initiatives.

As the international community’s experience since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows, it is easier to set global goals than to implement them. The non-binding political commitments reached in principle at Copenhagen already have run into controversy as well as varying interpretations, dimming the future of the so-called “Copenhagen Accord,” an ad hoc, face-saving agreement stitched together at the eleventh hour to cover up the summit’s failure. Only 55 of the 194 countries submitted their national action plans by the accord’s January 31 deadline.

The climate-change agenda has become so politically driven that important actors have tagged onto it all sorts of competing interests, economic and otherwise. That should not have been allowed to happen, but it has, and there can be no way forward unless and until we confront that fact.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
http://www.project-syndicate.org

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Ensuring resource security: From a local problem to a global challenge

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Why Precious Is Strategic

Increasingly, ensuring resource security will go from being a local problem to a global problem

Brahma Chellaney


The Times of India, March 30, 2010

Water, food, energy and minerals are highly strategic resources. They are essential to human development and, in the case of water and food, to human survival. Food production is, meanwhile, closely intertwined with water and energy, while water and energy, for their part, are intimately linked to climate change. While the way we produce and consume energy makes up about two-thirds of all human-induced greenhouse gases, the availability of water resources will be directly affected by global warming. 

Growing populations, rising affluence, changing diets and the demands of development have already, however, placed significant pressure upon these strategic resources. The global food system is already struggling to meet the present demand for food, yet the World Bank projects a rise of 50 per cent in global demand for food by 2030. To grow more food will require more water – a resource now also under great strain, as pollution is threatening the world’s freshwater resources. 

The 2030 Water Resources Group, a consortium of private-social sector organisations, has pointed to a growing "water gap" in which global demand for water will be 40 per cent more than supply by 2030. Today, agriculture alone accounts for approximately 3,100 billion cubic metres or 71 per cent of global water withdrawals; by 2030, without water-efficiency gains, such withdrawals will increase to 4,500 billion m3. Water withdrawals by industry are projected to rise from 16 per cent of today’s global demand to 22 per cent in 2030, with the greatest growth in use coming from China, the world’s factory. 

As for energy, the imperative to combat global warming goes against the current trends of rising consumption of energy, much of it produced with fossil fuel. Such is Asia’s appetite for energy that its share of global consumption is projected to almost double over the next 20 years – to about 48 per cent for oil and 22 per cent for natural gas. Yet, given its limited oil and gas reserves, Asia is particularly vulnerable to sudden supply shortage or disruption. 

A further aspect regarding competition over resources is the intensification of resource geopolitics. Europe, for example, has worked hard to shape the direction of some of the Caspian Basin and Central Asian oil and gas pipelines because it has a stake in the issue of the routing. If Central Asian and Caspian Sea energy supplies are routed to the European market, that would help Europe diversify its imports and ease its dependence on Russia. 

Within Asia, China has emerged as a key player in pipeline politics. Beijing has built its own pipeline to bring oil from Kazakhstan and is seeking two gas pipelines from Russia. These pipelines are a lynchpin of China’s strategy to diversify its imports away from over-reliance on the volatile Persian Gulf region, the current source of more than half of Chinese overseas purchases. In contrast, energy-poor India and Japan do not have a similar option. Lacking geographical contiguity with Central Asia and Iran, India will remain largely dependent on oil imports by sea from the Persian Gulf region. 

China, with the world’s most resource-hungry economy, fears that in the event of a strategic confrontation, its economy could be held hostage by hostile naval forces through the interdiction of its oil imports. That same concern has prompted Beijing to build a strategic oil reserve, and China is now seeking to fashion two strategic corridors in southern Asia through which it could transfer Persian Gulf and African oil for its consumption by cutting the transportation distance and minimising its exposure to US-policed sea lanes. 

The new Chinese-built port at Gwadar, Pakistan, represents China’s first strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea. Gwadar, at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, will link up with the Trans-Karakoram corridor to western China. China is also establishing a similar energy corridor through Myanmar. 

The blunt and incontrovertible truth is that energy demands in Asia are beginning to influence strategic thinking and military planning. For some states, a rising dependence on oil imports has served to rationalise both a growing emphasis on maritime power and security as well as a desire to seek greater strategic space. Concerns over sealane safety and rising vulnerability to disruption of energy supplies are prompting some countries to explore avenues for joint cooperation in maritime security. 

Water presents a unique challenge. While countries can scour the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep their economic machines humming, water cannot be secured through international trade deals. Sustainable and integrated management of national water resources is essential to prevent degradation, depletion and pollution of water. To meet the gap between supply and demand, water conservation, water efficiency, rainwater capture, water recycling and drip irrigation would have to be embraced at national, provincial and local levels. 

One can hope that advances in clean-water technologies would materialise before water conflicts flare. Low-cost, energy-efficient technologies for treating and recycling water could emerge from the scientific progress on nanoparticles and nanofibres and membrane bioreactors. 

The writer is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. 

Source: the Foresight Initiative.

(c) The Times of India, 2010.