‘PM must look into illegal thorium mining’

‘PM must look into illegal thorium mining’

PM must look into illegal thorium mining

Nuclear fuel thorium is being illegally extracted from deposits along Tamil Nadu and Kerala coastlines.

ANURADHA MUKHERJEE & ABHINANDAN MISHRA NEW DELHI | 8th Jul

The illegal mining of nuclear fuel resource thorium on the Tamil Nadu and Kerala coast has raised doubts about the seriousness of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to prevent illegal extraction of this rare resource. DAE is the nodal agency for the development of nuclear fuel in India.

According to a letter from ACACI (Action Committee against Corruption in India), which is chaired by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy and other experts to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the illegal mining of thorium is taking place from the beaches of Manavalakurichi in Tamil Nadu and Aluva and Chavara in Kerala.

The letter recommends that the coastline be handed over to the Army since it contains the world's largest reserve of thorium, easily extractable by bare hands from sea sand. The letter also recommends to the PM that a Mines Regulatory Authority like the Telecom Regulatory Authority be set up immediately and a policy be made to exclude strategic mineral resources from privatisation.

"All sorts of private companies are operating in these areas. They say they are extracting sand. After the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government seems to have forgotten about building our indigenous thorium technologies. The future of energy depends on the commercialisation of the hydrogen fuel cells and nuclear energy," Subramanian Swamy told this newspaper.

Kieran Ball, a UK-based journalist, who has written extensively on nuclear power in India, told this newspaper that the advantages of using thorium outweigh those of traditional nuclear fuels. "India isn't using more thorium because of the fact that international uptake has been low, most likely due to the costs involved of converting plants to thorium."

Ball stressed that given India's reserves of thorium and the fact that more countries are getting rid of their uranium power plants (Japan is soon to be nuclear-free in the wake of the nuclear accident in Fukushima), India should see this as a real opportunity to become a world leader in a "new and safer form of nuclear power".

"Thorium is indeed central to any of the Bhabha plans which the government may not be very serious about right now. (Former PM Jawaharlal) Nehru was very critical of thorium being shipped off to France, etc., from the Kerala coast. The French knew about the utility of thorium back then. Later, when Department of Atomic Energy was formed after Independence, one of the first decisions was to ban the export of thorium, but this is happening covertly in the name of exporting sand from these beaches or coir ropes dipped in it," said Dr A. Gopalakrishnan, former Atomic Energy Research Bureau (AERB) chief.

Already one reactor (Kakrapar-1), which uses thorium, is working in Surat, Gujarat. Kakrapar uses thorium rather than depleted uranium to achieve power flattening across the reactor core. Experts say that thorium is a strategic mineral for the operational Kamini reactor at Kalpakkam.

The ACACI letter also highlights a criminal case for illegal mining against VV Minerals owner Vaikuntarajan in the Madurai High Court. It alleges that mining licences have been granted by government agencies for exorbitant quantities of sand complex minerals which are inconceivable within the area claimed to be under the ownership of VV Minerals. India is currently expecting to meet up to 30% of its electricity demand through thorium-based reactors by 2050.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/pm-must-look-into-illegal-thorium-mining