Perils and prospects of the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in India
The protest against the 9900-MWe Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project, the largest engineering project ever conceived in Maharashtra, India, is gathering momentum. But the Rs.1 lakh-crore project is likely to be implemented as it has already received environmental clearance and the Union government is determined to double nuclear energy generating capacity by 2020. As part of the commitment to climate change, the government plans to change the proportion of energy mix. At present, nuclear energy accounts for nearly three per cent of our electricity generating capacity.
Today, 38 per cent of India’s greenhouse gas emission comes from the power sector and the government feels a pressing need for cleaner energy options.
Even though nuclear energy option reduces greenhouse gas emissions, the protest is mainly on account of other concerns.
The Jaitapur project will come up in collaboration with French giant Areva, which will supply uranium and reactor units, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.
On 26.11.2010, the Ministry of Environment & Forests accorded environmental clearance for the 6×1650 MWe nuclear power project in Jaitapur, Maharashtra. Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh announced the environmental clearance with 35 conditions and safeguards.
Extensive opposition to the project, particularly from the Konkan Bachao Samiti (KBS), was overruled by the government in granting this clearance.
The Environment minister however clarified that it could take on board only the ecological objections raised by the protesters. It has asked the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited and its partner Areva to address the other economic, commercial, safety and technological issues. Areva is a predominantly state-owned nuclear power company in France, which has developed the 1650 MWe European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), based on the French N4 and the German Konvoi reactor types.
But concerns have been raised on the maturity of the EPR technology as no EPR has been constructed and commissioned for operation anywhere in the world. Four EPRs are in different stages of construction and two of them are facing serious problems. The construction of the first EPR to Finland started in 2005 and construction and design problems have delayed the start-up of this plant to the second half of 2013 which is a delay of 3.5 years and a cost escalation of 50 per cent.
The second EPR construction in France was in December 2007. Similar construction and safety issues have led to a 50 per cent cost increase and a delay of commissioning to 2014.
China bought two EPRs for which the completion dates are 2013 and 2014.
As the EPR is allegedly in trouble, the French government asked Francois Roussely, a former chairman of the Electricite de France (EDF), in October 2009 to evaluate the status of the EPR and the French nuclear industry. The Roussely Report of July 2010 has concluded that the credibility of the EPR has been seriously damaged by the problems of the two reactors under construction.
According to the report, the complexity of the EPR comes from (questionable) design choices, notably of the power level, containment, core-catcher, and redundancy of systems.
The first of the six units of 1650 MWe capacity each is expected to be commissioned by 2017-18. It will help Maharashtra reduce its energy deficit. Nearly 1000 hectares of land has already been acquired for the project.
To address the grievances of the local community, the State government had formed an Empowered Group of Ministers to enhance the compensation.
The process of environmental clearance by the union ministry of environment has tried to balance four objectives: the amount of energy required to sustain a growth rate of nine per cent; the proportion of fuel mix; strategic diplomacy, especially after the Civilian Nuclear Deal; and the environmental concerns raised by a large number of groups.

By GLOBAL IAS TEAM

UN Climate Summit in Cancun, 2010
The United Nations Climate Change Conference held at Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The opening day of the conference laid great emphasis on achieving a package of decisions at the end of the 10-day deliberations. Currently, there are 194 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and 193 Parties to its Kyoto Protocol.
COP (Conference of the Parties), is the supreme body of the UNFCCC (United National Framework Convention on Climate Change). COP currently meets once a year to review the Convention’s progress. The word ‘conference’ is not used here in the sense of ‘meeting’ but rather of ‘association.’
CMP is the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
The sessions of the COP and the CMP are held during the same period to reduce costs and improve coordination between the Convention and the Protocol. The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.
The UNFCCC was one of three conventions adopted at the 1992 ‘Rio Earth Summit.’
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The most important aspect of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
SBI is the Subsidiary Body for Implementation. It makes recommendations on policy and implementation issues to the COP and, if requested, to other bodies.
SBSTA is the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice. The SBSTA serves as a link between information and assessments provided by expert sources (such as the IPCC) and the COP, which focuses on setting policy.
Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.
The Kyoto mechanisms are: Emissions trading (carbon market), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI).
By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions indicated by the intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Cancun Agreements signed by 193 Nations
Delegates from 193 nations agreed 11.12.2010 on a new global framework to help developing countries curb their carbon output and cope with the effects of climate change, but they postponed the harder question of precisely how industrialized and major emerging economies will share the task of making deeper greenhouse-gas emission cuts in the coming decade.
Members of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed to create a “Green Climate Fund” that will transfer money from rich countries to poor ones; research centers that will ease the transfer of clean-energy technology; and a system in which developing nations can be compensated for keeping rain forests intact. Signatories such as Japan and Russia oppose an extension because the United States, China and India are not bound to mandatory emission reductions under Kyoto.
The new framework encapsulates the current commitments that both industrialized and developing nations have made to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, though it notes that these will not meet the agreed-upon goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. To achieve that, industrialized countries would have cut their emissions between 25 and 40 percent compared with 1990 levels in the next decade, as opposed to the 16 percent they have promised.
Still, the agreement cemented and fleshed out key elements of the Copenhagen Accord, that major developing countries would subject voluntary emissions cuts to international scrutiny while the industrialized world would mobilize $100 billion in climate aid for poor nations by 2020.
Some elements of the deal, including one known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, could have an immediate impact on curbing carbon emissions. The new language establishes rules for calculating how much carbon is stored in forest stocks vulnerable to logging or burning, along with safeguards for rain-forest dwellers and biodiversity.
Cancun ends with a comma
The UN climate conference in Cancun (COP16) concluded on December 11, 2010.
The decisions reached included those on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), technology transfer, a climate fund and adaptation. Bolivia refused to endorse any document without binding emission cuts. COP president Patricia Espinosa called the agreements a landmark outcome. The agreements will enable the UNFCCC negotiations to continue working towards a binding climate deal in South Africa next year. Many groups described the outcome as progress but underlined the need for a speed-up of global climate diplomacy. The agreement is clearly better than what had seemed possible earlier during the conference but clearly falls far short of what is necessary to prevent climate change. The decisions acknowledge some of the measures to be taken to prevent an increase of global temperature of 2°C or more. However, there remains a major gap between the pledged climate action of UNFCCC parties and the 2°C goal. The slow pace at which the UN climate talks are progressing is a matter of concern.
India’s role and view on Cancun summit
Union Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has been appreciated for his role as a bridge-builder on contentious issues at the UN climate conference in cancun. AOSIS means Alliance of Small Island States, are most vulnerable to climate change and want developed countries as well as emerging economies, especially China and India, to take on hefty legally binding emission cuts.The major emerging economies — Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) — had welcomed the decision.
Agreements reached on Cancun summit
UN climate conference on Dec 11, 2010 reached a package titled “Cancun Agreements” to set up a $100 billion ‘Green Fund’ to fight global warming, a decision India described as a “crucial step forward”, but there was no agreement on extending the landmark Kyoto Protocol on emissions cuts beyond 2012.
A new beginning
The United Nations Climate Conference at Cancun has done well to strengthen the multilateral process and restore much-needed momentum to negotiations on one of the biggest challenges faced by all countries. The preceding summit at Copenhagen dealt a severe blow to consensus-building by allowing rich countries to dominate the proceedings but Mexico has commendably steered the discussions at Cancun, providing an opportunity to the developing world to articulate its concerns.
No major breakthrough was expected but the outcome of the conference is forward-looking. Two important decisions set the stage for measures to be taken beyond 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. Under the Cancun Agreements, the targets set by industrialised countries for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are recognised as part of the multilateral process. They must now draw up low-carbon development plans and strategies and also report their inventories annually. In the case of developing countries, actions for emissions reduction will be recognised officially; a registry will record and match their mitigation actions to finance and technology support from rich countries; and they will report their progress every two years. These form a good preamble for target-setting for all member-countries under an agreed framework at Durban next year.
India’s Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has suggested at the Cancun conference, apparently taking the long view, that some form of binding cuts on carbon emissions would have to be accepted by all countries in legal form. It would be wrong to read too much into this statement, since India has not acceded to any agreement. Both India and China have responsibly recognised their absolute carbon emissions and pledged voluntarily to transit to a green development path. India wants to cut its intensity of emissions relative to GDP. There is a grand national solar power generation plan for 2022 and a goal to double the share of nuclear power in a decade. That is positive — but much more has to be done in policy terms to raise efficiency and reduce emissions in, say, building and transport. China backs up climate goals with active support for low carbon technology development. Beijing recognises quite rightly that carbon cannot be cheap and that the bar for efficiency must rise constantly.
For perspective, it needs to be borne in mind that by one measure, the United States is responsible for 27 per cent of historical emissions and China for 9.5 per cent. This underscores the point that the U.S. must lead the developed world in technology transfer and funding through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Only then will big players such as Japan and Russia, which have misgivings about a future role for the Kyoto Protocol, remain in the fold.

By GLOBAL IAS TEAM