Shashi Tharoor, the Congress MP who is a hot favourite with the BJP because he has been speaking on many issues in a different voice from his party, the Congress, has come out strongly against the the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill that the Narendra Modi government has tabled during the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament.
The new bill is to replace the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 to open the doors of India’s nuclear industry to private players.
Tharoor made his arguments against the bill on the floor of the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
“This kind of broad subjective exemption power undermines the very safeguards the legislation claims to establish,” the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram said. “It will provide laxity in due diligence in a hugely critical sector and private players will lobby for exemptions to engage in profiteering at the expense of public safety.”
He said: “We cannot justify this under any democratic framework. Multiple sections are granting sweeping powers on vague grounds. The bill lacks an enforceable public participation mechanism. No regular public reporting of safety inspections or radiation monitoring. No mandatory tabling in Parliament… the SHANTI bill represents a dangerous leap into privatised nuclear atomic energy.”
Here is why Tharoor is objecting to the new law, in his own words:
Cap on liability
“The core of the liability reform caps at 300 million special drawing rights is approximately today $460 million or Rs 3,900 crore. Let this sink in… This cap has not changed in 15 years despite inflation, despite Fukushima, despite everything we have learned. The Fukushima disaster clean-up costs have already exceeded $182 billion… Chernobyl’s total economic impact exceeded $700 billion. Yet, we proposed a cap liability at less than half a billion.
“This is grossly inadequate when measured against the potential long-term health, livelihood and environmental costs of any serious accident. This is not a safety net. It is a trap door through which victims could fall into decades of legal battles and inadequate compensation.
Burden on taxpayers
“The bill also removes the earlier provisions where the operator had the right to recover compensation from equipment suppliers. This means that even if an accident occurs due to faulty design, substandard parts or negligent manufacturing by a supplier, that supplier walks away while Indian taxpayers have to bear the entire cost. This might in cases of serious accidents strain our economy significantly.
“We are effectively subsidising the risk for private international corporations while they retain all their profits. The state underwrites catastrophic risk… while private operators maximise returns. What kind of law is this?”
Genuine victims could be excluded
“The bill imposes a three-year period for filing compensation applications with extinction of the right to claim set of 10 years for property damage, 20 years for personal injury. Now, given the long latency periods of radiation related diseases, cancers can appear 20-30 years after exposure and intergenerational genetic impacts. These limitation periods are frankly shamefully restrictive. They will exclude many genuine victims who develop serious health impacts only after years of exposure.
“Children exposed to radiation who develop leukemia at the age of 25 will find they have no legal recourse. This is not justice. This is a statute of limitations designed to limit liability, not to compensate victims.”
Victims cannot file complaints
“Here perhaps is the most egregious provision of all. Negligence by an operator or person is recognised as a cognisable offence, but only a person duly authorised by the central government or the atomic energy regulatory board can file a complaint… if a nuclear facility operator is criminally negligent, affected communities cannot file a complaint. Civil society organisations cannot file a complaint. Even state governments cannot directly initiate criminal proceedings against the operator.
“This effectively excludes those most affected from seeking justice and concentrates gatekeeping power with the very institutions that have failed in prior oversight by limiting judicial recourse and rooting both legal and criminal actions.”
Blanket opening of the nuclear sector
“… any company or any person explicitly permitted by the central government is eligible to apply for a licence to set up and run nuclear facilities. This effectively amounts to a blanket opening up of the entire nuclear energy sector from mining to waste management and this will open it up to a wide range of private actors with indeterminable and indeterminate qualifications. More troubling still, the bill allows for a single composite licence for multiple activities across the nuclear fuel cycle.
“This means one entity could control mining, fuel fabrication, reactor operation and waste handling. Such concentration of control on any single operator or corporate group heightens systemic risk exponentially rather than containing the risk.
“When profit becomes the primary motive across the entire, safety checks could be compromised at every stage.”
The bill in its current form, he said, “contains such fundamental structural flaws as colleagues have pointed out that it requires comprehensive reworking rather than cosmetic amendments. Ideally it should have been referred to a committee, a standing committee or a joint parliamentary committee for further consideration.”