Floods put brakes on uranium mining

Mining in Andhra Pradesh has been put on hold since September after flash floods swept uranium deposits into agricultural land, sparking protests by farmers. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 7, 2008, 23:50:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s domestic uranium enrichment programme has received another setback. Mining in Andhra Pradesh has been put on hold since September after flash floods swept uranium deposits into agricultural land, sparking protests by farmers.

Although no radiation was detected, central government sources said the floods delayed mining in the Lambapur-Peddagattu area in Nalgonda district in central Andhra Pradesh. Work had started in this area earlier this year.

The chairman and managing director of the public sector Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) Ramendra Gupta however said, “There is nothing like that (setback). We have faced a few problems which are being sorted out,” he told HT from his office in Jharkhand’s Jadugoda town, 35 km from Jamshedpur.

But the World Nuclear Association had reported last month that the new mining project in Nalgonda had hit a roadblock because of people’s protests.

Temporary stoppage of mining in Andhra Pradesh is an example of how India’s bid to increase its domestic uranium production capacity has been hit.

India produces only 260 tonnes of uranium every year but has plans to increase its domestic production with an additional 690 tonnes by 2012.

Most of the additional uranium is expected from two sites — Domiasiat and Wakhyn in Meghalaya and Lambapur-Peddagattu and Tummallapalle in Andhra Pradesh.

Mining in Meghalaya has been on hold since 1992 following protests by residents who don’t want to part with their land. With only 30-25 per cent of fuel available, India’s nuclear plants are running at only 50 per cent of their capacity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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