Continuing an order-of-magnitude calculation for India based on population densities around nuclear plants, I can estimate, roughly, the population at risk due to proximity to a nuclear plant. For a 50 mile (ie 80km) evacuation radius around the current and proposed nuclear power plants in India, I essentially get an identical plot as in the first post on this issue except each number is 16 times larger ( from a squared area factor between 20 and 80 km radius). A sum total of all these amounts to a whopping 122 million i.e. 10% of India's current population. This is the population living at risk of a nuclear incidence.
Are we willing to risk so many?
Dear Arati,
ReplyDeleteThat is precisely the problem; our government is perfectly willing to risk even more numbers so long as they can get their neo-liberal targets of economic growth moving. What is a couple of million Indians anyway, would be their motto. Please remember that they have capped the nuclear accident liability at a miserable Rs.300 million and that after being embarrassed by a court judgment (unfortunately timed for the UPA government)that brought government's utter callousness with respect to the liability for the Bhopal Gas Accident of 25 years earlier.
Sudhir Vombatkere
Again, a great graphic.
ReplyDeleteBut....it might be important to put that 10% into perspective from the point of view that this is only the population that is in IMMEDIATE risk of anything happening to a nuclear plant near them.
The reality is that, with radioactive fallout, millions more will be at grave risk of health consequences--I would suggest some kind of addition along this line so that people who don't live in the radius of the plants as per the graph realize that that does not mean they may not be affected--prevailing winds, waters, contaminated food from the area, etc., will all play their role in rachetting up the effects and severity of a nuclear accident, as they have with Japan--people in the USA are getting massively radiated through wind and fallout on food and water sources, and that's from across the Pacific.
Just a thought to try and bring more awareness and sense of urgency to more people.