UCIL claims need review

Attention is now focussed on uranium mining across 500 acres surrounding Lambapur in Nalgonda district. The Uranium Corporation of India (UCIL) has been given permission to mine and process uranium, the most radioactive substance.
India needs its own uranium for its defence programme and need to generate 4,000 MW of nuclear power by 2008 and 10,000 MW by 2010.This is imperative as all developed countries have decided not to sell India any uranium.
This Rs 500-cr project is frightening. On the one hand, it is 6 kms from the Rajiv Gandhi Tiger Sanctuary. The mining area is 4 kms from the Nagarjuna Sagar dam and the processing plant is 4 kms from the Akkampally Balancing Reservoir, being developed as the permanent water source for the twin cites. Both are at least 300 metres above the water bodies. The UCIL will be mining an astonishing 1,250 tonnes of uranium every day, for at least the next 20 years.
This means that there will be huge amounts of radioactive waste. Uranium has a half-life period of 80,000 years, when it is at its hazardous worst. The UCIL is mining uranium in three places in Jharkhand. And the total disaster it has created at one of the mines at Jaduguda raises doubts about UCIL''s credentials to be responsible. This was evident on Tuesday too when they shamelessly attempted to hijack the environmental hearing at Lambapur.
My Congress colleague M Sashidhar Reddy organised a round table conference of political leaders, scientists, environmentalists and NGOs on August 16. He showed participants a video of Jaduguda. The fruits there have abnormal seed. People are developing illnesses resistant to known forms of cure. The deformities among children I cannot describe for fear of hurting readers'' sensibilities. Yet, the UCIL is claiming that there would be no danger. This despite questions on how the waste would be dealt with, the quality of radioactive tailings and the relevance of tailing ponds. They rule out underground water contamination, claiming they will function on a zero discharge concept.
It would be foolish and criminal to take this at face value. It is precisely for this reason that the Meghalaya CM last month constituted a high-level committee to go into the full detail of a similar uranium project at Domiasiat, again taken up by UCIL.
Our CM is absolutely silent even a week after PCC president D Srinivas demanded an all-party meeting to discuss the issue.
The past has taught us that Chandrababu Naidu is like the deaf who don''t listen, but invent well. Today, he is forewarned.