KARACHI: The construction work on the twin nuclear power plant project is moving forward with absolute disregard for the safety and well-being of 20 million people who live in Karachi. Further construction on the project must be halted, says a press statement jointly released by civil society organisations and human rights activists on Friday.

The federal and Sindh governments, it says, have failed to consider the serious risks posed by these nuclear power plants, which included a potentially devastating nuclear accident.

“The approval of this project has come without proper public consultation and involved repeated failures to uphold environmental laws that are supposed to protect the public,” says the statement that has come after construction work on one of the nuclear power plants was officially launched by the prime minister on Thursday.

According to the statement, the disregard for public consultations and legal oblig­ations could be gauged from the fact that the Environmental Impact Asse­ssment (EIA) report was initially submitted in utmost secrecy and there was no public consultation process.

“The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) became a part of this recklessness when it first approved the initial EIA report in haste without public consultation, which is required under the law. Then, it held a public hearing on the orders of the Sindh High Court in a very objectionable manner.

“The Environmental Impact Assessment process was deeply flawed. Sepa chose to overlook a number of objections raised by the public. It violated its own laws by failing to inform the public representatives why their critical comments were rejected or ignored. Its approval glossed over serious threats to public interests and the environment,” the statement points out.

The provincial environmental watchdog and the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), it says, callously overlooked the fact that the reactor spent fuel storage pool could also face an accident and that in such an event there is nothing that can stop a very high level of most lethal radioactivity to be dispersed in the direction of some of the most dense population centres of Karachi.

They complained that Sepa in giving a blanket approval to the project failed to ask the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to explore the option for other alternative sources of electricity generation as required under the law, such as wind and solar power — currently the most rapidly growing sources of electricity generation all over the world. Even in China, annual growth in nuclear power plants is only five to 10 per cent of that in wind energy power plants.

Besides the risks to life, the project, the statement says, completely ignores the social and economic consequences of a major nuclear accident on Karachi, or how people will be evacuated. The project proponents have not considered the effect of a serious reactor accident on the industries and businesses in Karachi.

“What is most alarming is the unreasonable refusal on the part of the PAEC to accept that lethal radioactivity could breach the reactor area into the environment, putting in grave danger lives and well-being of the 20 million population of Karachi.

“Most of the time of the year wind blows from the reactor site towards the city. Yet the PAEC, Sepa and the PNRA refuse to accept the international recommendation of sitting nuclear power reactors at least 30 km away from population centres and instead deem it sufficient to protect only a sparsely populated area up to 5 km around the reactor site.

“The PAEC has no plans to protect the Karachi city population, including evacuating it, in case a severe accident happens at the reactor,” it says.

Together with the PAEC, Sepa, too, is not concerned with the impact of the large amount of heat that the four proposed reactors at the site would discharge into the sea for the next 60 years, especially on the marine life near the coast, which would severely harm the livelihood of nearby fishermen communities.

The PAEC, it says, is ignoring the fact that the reactor being imported is a new design that has never and nowhere been tested.

“The Hualong-1 design is a hybrid French technology and the first reactor of this kind being constructed in China has at least 15pc of its components imported from France. China will not be allowed to use them in the Karachi reactors.

“Instead, the Karachi reactor will have Chinese versions of these components, and hence Karachi reactors would become the first testing ground for at least 15pc supplied components. This increases the level of risk, which the PAEC and the PNRA refuse to accept,” it says.

Further construction of the Karachi reactors should be halted. Priority must be given to safeguarding the people of Karachi and the environment from a nuclear accident, however improbable.

The statement is endorsed by executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) Karamat Ali, chairperson of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) Mohammad Ali Shah, Roland deSouza of Shehri-Citizens for Better Environment, senior scientist and president of the Pakistan Peace Coalition Dr A. H. Nayyar, senior architect Arif Belguami and Asad Iqbal Butt of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Karachi.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2015

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