'It would be a mistake to abandon nuclear power'

The Fukushima disaster has cast a cloud on the future of nuclear power. Japan, Germany, Switzerland and China have already decided to curb - or phase out - their reliance on nuclear energy. Public opinion in nuclear-dependent France too is swaying away from it. In Jaitapur there is opposition to a proposed nuclear power plant. However, , an economist at theUniversity of Bath in England and co-author of a widely talked-about study onhuman health impacts of nuclear power, maintains that making electricity fromnuclear fuels is far less damaging to human health than making it from coal, oilor natural gas. He spoke with :Over a range of studies conducted inEurope and the US, the health costs of nuclear power have come out lower thanthose from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels generate emissions of various pollutantsthat result in significant health impacts, including respiratory andcardiovascular diseases, days when you cannot work because of these problems,premature mortality, hospital admissions, chronic bronchitis, loss of life inmining accidents and waste disposal, and so on. Premature deaths from exposureto particulate matter, which is a key pollutant from coal combustion, areestimated to be in the range of 1,50,000 in India. With nuclear power we havenone of these issues. The impacts of routine radiation are estimated to be muchsmaller than those of fossil fuels - by more than an order of magnitude. Ofcourse, we do have the possibility of health costs of nuclear accidents. Nuclearfuels increase the risk of cancer from exposure to radiation, and in specialcases, hereditary effects passed on through people exposed to high levels ofradiation. But while these are spectacular, accidents such as those at Fukushimaand Chernobyl are rare and the resulting losses are not that large compared tothe amount of power generated.In our assessment, we try to includeboth. The hard economics is modified to include the so-called "external" costsof power generation, so that a fair comparison can be made based on the socialcosts of each type of power. It is this comparison that changes the rankings ofpower sources away from coal and, to some extent, in favour of renewable andnuclear power. One problem, however, is that the agencies that make decisionsabout the sources of power face only the direct costs and not the social costs.So we have to find ways of making them responsive to the true social costs ofpower. We have to learn from every accidentto make sure that the errors that led to it are not repeated. This certainlyapplies to the cases of Chernobyl and Fukushima. In India, it is imperative thatsuch plants be located, designed and operated according to the highest possiblesafety standards. But that is possible and the use of nuclear power would serveIndia well in terms of the three goals of increasing the access of its people topower, reducing their exposure to harmful particles, and reducing the country'scontribution to greenhouse gases. It would be a mistake to abandon nuclear powerbecause of Fukushima.