A blow to the global nuclear-power industry

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Chellaney

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

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.

The Murky Politics of Nuclear Power in India

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Chellaney

Ghosts return to haunt nuclear deal

From the resurrected cash-for-votes scandal to a rigged process favouring four foreign vendors — and from new safety concerns to the special legislation that caps the foreign suppliers’ accident liability by burdening the Indian taxpayer — the nuclear deal’s future looks more troubled than ever

Brahma Chellaney
The Economic Times, March 18, 2011

The unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan actually bears a distinct U.S. imprint: All six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were designed by General Electric. The prototype of this reactor model — known as the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Mark I — was supplied to India by GE, which built the twin-reactor Tarapur station in the 1960s on a turnkey basis. Tarapur, one of the world’s oldest operating nuclear plants, has some of the same risk factors that played a role at Fukushima.

Since the Fukushima crisis erupted, several countries have announced steps to scale back or review nuclear power, with Germany temporarily shutting down seven of its pre-1980 plants and Switzerland suspending plans to build and replace nuclear reactors. Even China, known for its lack of respect for safety issues, has announced that it is suspending new plant approvals until it could strengthen safety standards.

In contrast, New Delhi’s response has been to launch a public-relations campaign to say Indian nuclear plants are safe and secure. The very persons who blurred the line between fact and fiction in the debate over the controversial Indo-U.S. nuclear deal are again engaging in casuistry.

A smarter, wiser and more-credible course for authorities would be to acknowledge that, given the gravity of the Fukushima crisis, India must review its nuclear-power policy and systems to ensure that long-term risks of nuclear accidents are contained.

To be sure, India — given its low per capita energy consumption — needs to generate far more electricity to economically advance. So it must tap all sources of power, including safe and cost-competitive nuclear power.

The consequences of a nuclear accident in a large, densely populated country like India are going to be greater than in an island nation such as Japan. The economics of reactor imports is also a key issue in India because the taxpayer must not be burdened with more subsidies.

Yet those who pushed the nuclear deal through without building a national consensus are now too invested in that deal to be able to take an objective view of cost competitiveness and long-term safety. One indication of that has been the brazen manner in which a nuclear park has been exclusively reserved, without inviting bids, for each of the four chosen foreign vendors.

The Wikileaks disclosures over the cash-for-votes scandal only confirm what has been well known — the role of big money in lubricating the nuclear deal. Now big money is influencing the opaque contract making.

Nevertheless India’s nuclear safety — and the wisdom of a massive import-based expansion of the nuclear power programme — will now come under closer scrutiny. In fact, given the way India handled the Bhopal gas catastrophe that killed at least 22,000, Fukushima holds important implications. Although the exact sequence of events at Fukushima is still not clear, consider some obvious nuclear dangers in India:

■The chain of incidents engulfing all six Fukushima reactors was triggered by their close proximity to each other. With a flare-up at one reactor affecting systems at another, Japan has ended up with serial blasts, fires, spent-fuel exposures and other radiation leaks at the Fukushima complex. The lesson: a string of events can quickly overwhelm emergency preparedness and safety redundancies built into reactor systems.

This seriously calls into question India’s decision to approve construction of six to 12 large reactors at each new nuclear park.

■The Fukushima spent-fuel fire and other problems shine a spotlight on the spent-fuel challenges at the sister plant in Tarapur, where the discharged fuel has been accumulating for over four decades because the U.S. has refused to either take it or allow India to reprocess it. At the so-called Spent Fuel Storage Facility, the Tarapur spent-fuel bundles are kept under water in specially engineered bays.

This mounting, highly radioactive spent fuel poses major space problems and safety and environmental hazards that are greater than at any other plant in the world. In fact, the spent-fuel rods — unlike the reactor — have no containment structure. Yet New Delhi has shied away from exerting pressure on Washington to resolve an issue that threatens environmental and public safety in India’s commercial heartland.

■The operating license of the aging Tarapur BWRs has been periodically extended by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Despite safety and equipment upgrades at Tarapur, the fact is that first-generation reactors have generally some dangerous weaknesses. In fact, much before the Fukushima incidents, several U.S. experts had warned that this BWR model was susceptible to explosion and containment failure.

The power shortages in the Mumbai area have influenced the decision to keep the two BWRs in operation up to 2030. But in the U.S., the utility running a BWR plant of the same vintage as in Tarapur — at Oyster Creek in New Jersey — recently decided to close it in 2019. And the Vermont State Senate last year voted to stop the less-old Vermont Yankee BWR plant from operating past next year.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

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

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Chellaney

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

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Chellaney

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

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.
Copyright:

The paradox of nuclear power: A water-guzzling technology, yet very vulnerable to water

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Chellaney

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.

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.

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.

Lamaistic Drama and Intrigue on the Himalayas

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Chellaney

Is the Karmapa Lama an agent of Beijing or a political scapegoat?

Chinese cash seized from the monastery of one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism has stirred fresh intrigue
The Karmapa Lama at his monastery in Dharamsala, India, where large sums of Chinese cash were seized in a police raid
Brahma Chellaney
The Guardian
guardian.co.uk, 10 February 2011

The seizure by police of large sums of Chinese currency from the Indian monastery of the Karmapa Lama – one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism – has revived old suspicions about his continuing links with China and forced him to deny that he is an “agent of Beijing”.

The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, and the Karmapa Lama are the three highest figures in Tibetan Buddhism, representing parallel institutions that have intermittently been at odds with each other throughout their history. And China, seeking to tighten its grip on Tibet, has worked to control the traditional process of finding the reincarnation of any senior lama that passes away.

Thus, in 1992, China helped select the seven-year-old Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa Lama, installing him at Tibet’s Tsurphu monastery – the Karmapas’ ancestral abode, which was almost destroyed during the cultural revolution. He became the first reincarnated “living Buddha” to be recognised and ratified by Communist China.

But then, in 1999, Dorje staged a stunning escape to India via Nepal, attracting the world’s attention, but also deep suspicion, because of the apparent ease with which he and his entourage managed to flee. The Dalai Lama has hosted him at the Gyuto monastery in Dharamsala, India, ever since.

Earlier, in 1995, China installed its own Panchen Lama after its security services abducted the Tibetans’ six-year-old appointee, who has simply disappeared, along with his family.

Now, China is waiting for the current Dalai Lama – who is over 75 and has had bouts of ill health in recent years – to pass away, so that it can anoint his successor, too. But the Dalai Lama, the charismatic face of the Tibetan movement, has made it clear that his successor will come from the “free world”, thereby excluding Chinese-ruled Tibet. This has set the stage for the emergence of two rival Dalai Lamas, one chosen by China and the other by the Tibetan exile movement.

In fact, the Chinese-appointed Karmapa Lama has a doppelganger Karmapa, who has set up shop in New Delhi. With both the Karmapas in India, the Indian government has sought to maintain peace by barring the contenders from the sacred Rumtek monastery in the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim.

Against this background, the discovery of large sums of Chinese and other foreign currency has ignited a fresh controversy over Dorje. While his supporters have staged protests against the police raid and interrogation of their leader, Indian officials have expressed apprehension that China may be funding Dorje as part of a plan to influence the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect, which controls important monasteries along the militarised Indo-Tibetan border.

According to Xu Zhitao, an official at the Chinese Communist party central committee’s united front work department, the allegation that “the Karmapa [may be] a Chinese agent or spy shows that India is keeping its mistrustful attitude toward China”. But such an attitude seems warranted: Xu’s Tibet division is tasked with overseeing monastic institutions, inculcating “patriotic” norms among monks and nuns – through re-education when necessary – and infiltrating the Tibetan resistance movement and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries on both sides of the Indo-Tibetan frontier.

Communities in the Himalayan region have historically been closely integrated. But, with Tibet locked behind an iron curtain since the 1951 Chinese annexation, the economies and cultures of the entire Himalayan region have weakened. Tibetan Buddhism, however, still serves as the common link, with the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect a powerful force on the Indian side.

The cash haul has reopened the question that arose in 1999: Was China behind Dorje’s flight to India, or is he a genuine defector who simply got fed up with living in a gilded Chinese cage?

China had several possible motives for staging his “escape”, including a desire to strengthen his claim to the title at a time when the rival contender (backed by important interests in India, Bhutan and Taiwan) appeared to be gaining ground. Had Dorje remained in Tibet, he could have lost out to his rival, because the 280-year-old Rumtek monastery, the Kagyu school’s holiest institution, is where the sect’s all-powerful “black hat”, the symbolic crown of the Karmapa – believed to be woven from the hair of female deities – is located.

China would also have drawn comfort from the fact that, within the murky world of intra-Tibetan politics, its anointed Karmapa, oddly, had the Dalai Lama’s backing. Historically, the Dalai Lamas and Karmapa Lamas vied with each other for influence until the Dalai Lama’s Gelug school gained ascendancy over the Kagyu order. According to Tibetan tradition, however, the Dalai Lama has no role in selecting or endorsing a Karmapa. The Dalai Lama in this case gave his approval for purely political reasons.

The previous Karmapa Lama died in 1981, and the controversy over his successor that has raged ever since also epitomises a struggle for control of the $1.5bn in assets held by the Kagyu order, the richest in Tibetan Buddhism. With control of the Rumtek monastery embroiled in rival lawsuits, the New Delhi-based Karmapa has, not surprisingly, greeted the recent cash seizure as “exposing” his Chinese-appointed rival.

Significantly, in contrast to its increasingly vituperative attacks on the Dalai Lama, China has not denounced (or de-recognised) its Karmapa, despite his flight to India signalling its failure to retain the loyalty of a supposed puppet. The Mandarin-speaking Ogyen Trinley Dorje, now 25, occasionally criticises the Chinese government, including its efforts “to create this ethnic conflict” in Tibet. Nevertheless, China has refrained from attacking him, making clear that it wants him to return eventually.

And the ongoing Karmapa saga, with its shadowy politics and intrigue, could turn out to be only the opening act – a foretaste of what may come when two duelling Dalai Lamas emerge after the incumbent passes from the scene.

Rationalizing Human-Rights Abuses

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Chellaney

UNIVERSAL VALUES DO MATTER

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The Japan Times
January 26, 2011

With a Nobel Peace Prize to his credit, U.S. President Barack Obama was widely expected to advance universal values. Yet he has signaled that promotion of human rights is a tool to be used only against the small kids on the global block who hold no major economic benefits for the United States — the Burmas and the Belaruses.

In relation to the world’s largest and oldest autocracy, China — which has intensified its crackdown on democracy activists, Internet freedom and ethnic minorities — Obama has only compounded the mistake of his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in 2009 said that the U.S. will not let the human-rights issue “interfere” with closer Sino-American relations.

Chinese President Hu Jintao’s just-concluded U.S. tour was noteworthy not for his grudging admission that his country has a subpar human-rights record, with China’s state-run media promptly expurgating his comment that “a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.” Rather the visit was notable for the manner Obama bent over backward at the joint news conference with Hu to virtually rationalize China’s human-rights abuses.

Asked by a questioner to explain “how the U.S. can be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly [and] for using censorship and force to repress its people,” Obama replied that “China has a different political system than we do”; that “China is at a different stage of development than we are”; and that “there has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years” and “my expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution and further change.”

In truth, Obama followed in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton by publicly downgrading human rights in America’s China policy, contending that differences over “the universality of certain rights” will not come in the way of better relations with China because “part of human rights is people being able to make a living and having enough to eat and having shelter and having electricity.”

Although citizens in China now enjoy property rights, freedom to travel overseas and other rights that were unthinkable a generation ago, some things have changed for the worse, such as the greater repression in Tibet and Xinjiang, more-sophisticated information control and online censorship, and whipping up of virulent nationalism as the legitimating credo of communist rule. Yet Obama affirms that China is moving in the right direction and wants its suppressed citizens to patiently wait 30 years for further change.

The proffered rationalizations for repression, including earlier stage of development and the importance of alleviating poverty, beg the question: Why the macho approach, for example, against impoverished Burma, which, unlike China, has no record of routine executions, or employing gulag labor to make goods for export, or dispatching convicts as laborers on overseas projects?

During his recent Asian tour, Obama attacked Burma three times while in India, and then in Indonesia sung a line opposite to the one he intoned in Hu’s presence: “Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.”

If Tunisia’s popular uprising holds a broader message, it is that U.S.-backed despots in the Arab world have created pressure-cooker societies, where the pent-up anger takes the form of fundamentalism, extremism and even terrorist violence. What Arab nations need is a safety valve — true democratic participation that would empower the masses and decide issues at the ballot box.

Yet narrow geopolitical interests crimp U.S. ability to promote democratic empowerment in the Arab world. A quiet cold war that pits the U.S., Israel and the Sunni oil sheikdoms against Iran, Syria and their allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, ostensibly validates Washington’s cozy relationships with despotic Sunni Arab regimes, including a jihad-bankrolling Saudi Arabia.

With Washington reluctant to push powerful Russia on human rights, the weight of democracy sanctions or pressures falls on the small, economically vulnerable states. Because such actions bring no economic pain in the form of job losses in the West or higher oil prices, the Cubas and Zimbabwes of the world have become the kickable “Chinas.”

But this raises a larger question: Can promotion of human freedom and the rule of law become a geopolitical tool wielded only against the weak and the marginalized? When the small, poor states fall victim, the world tends to turn a blind eye to even genocide. As the cases of Burundi and Rwanda showed, the world did nothing to stop genocidal killings there.

Obama’s leniency toward the big human-rights abusers overlooks an important connection between their internal and external policies. How China, for example, treats its citizens has an important bearing on the way it treats neighbors and other states. Freed from real pressure to adhere to universal values, any powerful autocracy will be less willing to play by the rules on trade, resource, security, currency and other issues. If anything, this opens up space for it to subtly help shape new international rules in the years ahead.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of “Asian Juggernaut” (HarperCollins USA, 2010).

Brahma Chellaney; geoestratega, analista internacional experto en países emergentes

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Chellaney

Brahma Chellaney; geoestratega, analista internacional experto en países emergentesVictor-M Amela, Ima Sanchís, Lluís Amiguet
“Los indios queremos ser europeos”
31/01/2011 – 00:14 | Actualizada a las

Dos predicciones
Chellaney es maestro en vislumbrar el futuro en las contradicciones del presente: los europeos tememos a los asiáticos, porque trabajan más que nosotros por mucho menos, pero ellos aspiran no sólo al sueldo; sino también a nuestro sistema de bienestar y libertades. Así que Chellaney predice que nosotros tendremos que esforzarnos más por menos, pero los asiáticos a su vez deberán invertir parte de su crecimiento en crear su Estado del bienestar. La democracia ‘con sus corruptelas’ es válvula de escape salvadora para los conflictos en India, pero es una dictadura la que saca a China de la pobreza. Así que China tendrá que democratizarse para canalizar sus conflictos en alza o estallará.

Aquí les tenemos mucho miedo a los asiáticos, porque trabajan por la mitad de sueldo…
Pues deberían tenerles menos miedo y alegrarse de que prosperen, porque ¿sabe por qué hay hoy menos guerras en el mundo que hace cien años?

¿…?
Porque hay mucha menos gente pobre. La creación de prosperidad es el primer factor para la disminución de las guerras. Porque si usted se está muriendo de hambre: ¿qué interés tiene en mantener la paz?

Más bien poco.
En cambio, si usted se gana la vida y tiene un futuro, se convierte en accionista de la paz mundial y estará interesado en mantenerla en su país. Por eso, hoy hay menos guerras en el planeta que hace un siglo.

Ojalá tenga cada vez más razón.
Además, a esos españoles que tienen tanto miedo de que, para competir con los asiáticos, les obliguen a trabajar más por menos, también les diré otra cosa… ¡Que se animen!

Pues falta nos hace últimamente.
¡Si son ustedes ejemplo del mundo! Los asiáticos y los africanos quieren vivir como ustedes, los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea…

Yo creí que todos querían irse a EE.UU.
La Unión Europea es hoy –mucho más que Estados Unidos– el ejemplo al que les gustaría llegar a los ciudadanos de los países emergentes. Los indios queremos ser como europeos de la Unión Europea. Así que corrijan lo necesario, pero defiendan ustedes su modelo, porque no hay otro mejor.

En España estamos casi en recesión y con más del 20 por ciento de paro.
El desarrollo es mucho más que la cifra del crecimiento del PIB: es la igualdad social, la protección de los más débiles, una cobertura sanitaria universal de calidad, educación superior competitiva, protección del medio ambiente y una administración honesta.

Estamos de acuerdo.
Pues lo han hecho ustedes mejor en todo eso que nadie, incluido EE.UU., y en Asia lo sabemos. Los asiáticos quieren los estándares de bienestar y democracia de la Unión Europea: nadie quiere vivir como los chinos o como los emiratos árabes, por muy ricos que sean. Y si ustedes crecen menos hoy, es porque ya tienen cierto desarrollo…

¿Quién crece mejor: China o India?
China crece algo más, el 10 por ciento, e India, el 9, pero creo que, pese a la enorme corrupción y la triste inoperancia del Estado indio, la democracia hace más estable a India y eso acabará siendo una ventaja definitiva para India incluso a medio plazo.

¿No es más estable una dictadura?
¡Mire a Túnez y ahora Egipto! La democracia es mayor garantía de estabilidad que cualquier autoritarismo. Los indios lo sabemos bien, porque nuestra democracia no es un ideal, es ante todo una necesidad: es la válvula de escape de las inevitables tensiones étnicas, lingüísticas, clasistas y territoriales de un país inmenso. Sin la democracia estaríamos en permanente guerra civil.

Pues la dictadura comunista chinamantiene el orden en el suyo con eficacia.
¿Por cuánto tiempo? Su 10 por ciento de crecimiento económico tiene un inquietante correlato que no se difunde: ¡el número de manifestaciones callejeras también se ha disparado un 10 por ciento!

Pero el PC chino aún lo controla todo.
Al partido le gusta dar la impresión de que la población china es homogénea étnica y socialmente, pero eso es falso. Además de las crecientes desigualdades sociales, fruto del crecimiento, el 60 por ciento de los chinos son de etnias diversas. No podrán resolver esas diferencias sin democracia.

Tienen los tanques.
Los tanques pueden reprimir un día una revuelta, como en Tíbet o Tiananmen, pero no pueden reprimir cada día todas las revueltas. O el régimen encuentra el modo de hacer una transición suave hacia una democracia más o menos abierta, o llegará el día en que una de esas revueltas catalizará todos los malestares hasta otra guerra civil.

Esperemos que encuentren la fórmula.
Más nos vale a todos, porque si China acaba siendo la primera potencia mundial sin ser una democracia, todas las relaciones internacionales y el sentido de la historia cambiarán: la democracia y el respeto a la ley internacional dejarán de ser la aspiración y la norma de los países y serán sustituidos por el equilibrio del terror al poder militar.

¿Qué intuye?
De momento, los militares mandan cada día más en China.

Inquietante.
Tienen más desafíos abiertos: ¿logrará China pasar de una economía de la imitación a otra de la innovación? Si no, se estancará.

Japón lo consiguió a medias.
Japón imitaba en los 70 como imitan los chinos hoy y logró transformarse luego en un país más inventor, pero me temo que China no podrá convertirse en innovadora aún…

¿Por qué?
Porque el autoritarismo impide la innovación, que surge en el libre flujo horizontal de ideas en equipo. Así que sin democracia en una sociedad abierta nadie inventa nada.

¿Tiene pruebas?
Los laboratorios americanos tienen dos grandes grupos de becarios: chinos e indios. Los chinos son mejores en dar escala a innovaciones existentes, pero no inventan nada nuevo; en cambio, los indios son innovadores, porque conviven con la diversidad y sus exigencias desde que nacen.

Speech at Casa Asia, Barcelona

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Chellaney

Economía y cooperación > Brahma Chellaney: «El nuevo papel de India en el mundo es el de puente entre Oriente y Occidente»
Brahma Chellaney: «El nuevo papel de India en el mundo es el de puente entre Oriente y Occidente»

02/02/2011

Casa Asia ha organizado la conferencia «El papel de la India en el nuevo orden mundial», con la que el profesor Brahma Chellaney ha inaugurado el ciclo dedicado a la India que ha organizado la institución junto con la Fundación Areces. La ponencia del profesor de estudios estratégicos del Centro de Investigación Política de Nueva Delhi ha proporcionado las claves para entender el papel de su país como potencia emergente en el nuevo orden mundial, en el que destaca el auge económico de Asia en el contexto internacional.

En su nueva faceta como potencia emergente, India ha demostrado que posee tres fuerzas y tres debilidades. Las fuerzas se resumen en el papel de India como puente en el diálogo político internacional (lo que hoy es de una importancia vital, como es en el caso de la lucha contra el cambio climático); la unidad de la diversidad y la capacidad para beneficiarse de ella y, finalmente, la modernización de la democracia por la que ha pasado India en los últimos tiempos (hecho que se contrapone a otros países emergentes, como China).

En cuanto a las debilidades, Brahma Chellaney se ha referido a su situación geoestratégica y sus «difíciles vecinos, que no respetan las normas internacionales» (India se encuentra entre países y zonas en conflicto como Pakistán, Irak, Birmania o Bangladesh): «La paradoja de la proximidad es tal que India tiene mejores relaciones con Estados Unidos o con la Unión Europea que con sus vecinos», ha afirmado. Este hecho tiene como consecuencia una segunda debilidad: el efecto de «derrame» que tiene estar en esta zona de conflicto, por lo que se ha encontrado en el ojo del huracán del terrorismo, por ejemplo. Finalmente, una tercera debilidad han sido sus numerosos gobiernos de coalición y los problemas de gobernabilidad que éstos han provocado.

Pese o gracias a estas debilidades y fuerzas, este país ve hoy en día cómo hay diversos factores que afectan a su perfil internacional: el más importante, su crecimiento económico, que hace que sea necesario, según Chellaney, una reestructuración de las instituciones internacionales. La India ha pasado de ser un país no alienado a «multialienado».

El resurgimiento de Asia en el mundo deja vislumbrar los retos a los que se enfrenta en cuanto a seguridad, desarrollo y recursos (sobre todo agua y energía). En este contexto, la India ve, además de los retos, las oportunidades, sobre todo como puente entre Oriente y Occidente, entre el mundo desarrollado y el mundo en vías de desarrollo. «En estos días en que el mundo redefine su momento histórico, la estabilidad en la India y en Asia es básica para garantizar la seguridad internacional. Es ahí donde India puede dejar claro su nuevo papel como puente», concluyó el que está considerado internacionalmente como uno de los principales intelectuales políticos de India.

Otros enlaces
Conferència: “El paper de l’Índia en el nou ordre mundial”

– En los medios

El Pais interview

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Chellaney

ENTREVISTA: BRAHMA CHELLANEY Consejero del Gobierno indio
“La revuelta de la calle se extenderá hasta Pakistán”
GEORGINA HIGUERAS – Madrid – 02/02/2011
Profesor de Estudios Estratégicos en el Centro de Investigación Política de India y colaborador de distintas universidades de EE UU, Brahma Chellanay es consejero del Gobierno indio en cuestiones de seguridad internacional, terrorismo y control de armas.

Profesor de Estudios Estratégicos en el Centro de Investigación Política de India y colaborador de distintas universidades de EE UU, Brahma Chellanay es consejero del Gobierno indio en cuestiones de seguridad internacional, terrorismo y control de armas. En una entrevista realizada durante su reciente estancia en Madrid, Chellanay sostiene que la falta de futuro de los jóvenes árabes “ha llenado las calles de ira” en una protesta que no hay quien pare. Y afirma: “En 10 años, la revuelta de la calle habrá cambiado la faz de los regímenes despóticos contra los que se han levantado”.

Pregunta. ¿Cómo ve lo que está sucediendo en Egipto?

Respuesta. Es una crisis muy fuerte para el mundo árabe y para Estados Unidos. Es la revuelta de la calle -en la que los jóvenes han volcado su frustración y odio- contra los palacios -donde se refugian los tiranos que les gobiernan-. La calle es antiamericana y los palacios los sostiene EE UU. De ahí, las consecuencias que también puede tener en EE UU.

P. ¿Es otro episodio del llamado choque de civilizaciones?

R. No, no es una cuestión de musulmanes contra Occidente. El mundo árabe vive un levantamiento político movido por la ira contra los dirigentes corruptos y por el abismo creado entre esos gobernantes y una juventud sin futuro. Es una protesta legítima nacida en la rabia por creciente hundimiento de la clase media y de sus esperanzas de una vida digna.

El Pais

P. ¿Cree que la revuelta se extenderá más allá de Egipto?

R. El enfrentamiento entre la calle y los palacios se esparcirá por el norte de África y Oriente Próximo hasta llegar a Pakistán. En 10 años, la revuelta habrá cambiado la faz de los regímenes despóticos contra los que se ha levantado. Acabará con la mayoría de estos, incluida la monarquía saudí.

P. ¿Considera que el efecto dominó barrerá las dinastías del Golfo?

R. Esos países son incluso más frágiles que el norte de África por la enorme cantidad de extranjeros que viven en ellos y porque son naciones que encierran contradicciones étnicas o sociales. Por ejemplo, la monarquía de Bahrein y sus principales autoridades son suníes cuando la mayoría de la población es chií.

P. ¿Ve como uno de los detonantes de la revuelta la decisión de Mubarak de entronizar a su hijo Gamal para dirigir Egipto?

R. Las dinastías tienen pocas posibilidades de supervivencia en esta situación volcánica. El despotismo es una olla a presión sin válvula de seguridad, cuando su interior comienza a hervir estalla sin control. No hay escape. La democracia, por el contrario, sí que tiene válvula de seguridad por la que se puede canalizar la rabia.

P. La gente no grita contra EE UU ¿Por qué le va a afectar?

R. Hay un sentimiento de que los dictadores son corruptos y déspotas porque tienen el apoyo de EE UU. Su actuación se seguirá muy de cerca.

P. ¿Será positiva la retirada de las tropas de Afganistán?

R. La retirada será positiva para EE UU que ha librado dos guerras sin sentido, aunque si abandonan Afganistán no se librarán del terror en sus ciudades. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de la estabilidad regional es negativa, porque los talibanes no podrán controlar todo Afganistán y el país se romperá en base a la división étnica. Con ello, se expandirá la inestabilidad a toda Asia Central cuyas fronteras se han trazado precisamente dividiendo las etnias.