Nuclear power: Bangladesh's
long cherished dream

Maswood Alam Khan

In the United Nations on December 8, 1953 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his famous speech dubbed "Atom for Peace" pledged that 'the United States would devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be directed to his death, but consecrated to his life.' The speech conveyed a volume of comfort to the people of the world who were appalled at the deafening horrors two atomic bombs had befallen Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the fag end of Second World War.
   The first seed of belief that 'atom can also exude peace' was planted in human mind in 1954 when about 2000 homes were illuminated by a few megawatts of electricity produced by the world's first nuclear power plant at Obninsk, USSR.
   Only seven years after Obninsk, the authorities also weaved in 1961 a cocoon of dreams to power homes by a nuclear generator; the authorities earmarked a vast expanse of 260 acres of land at a small hamlet Ruppur on the river Padma in Pabna of northern Bangladesh to set up a nuclear plant. Residential quarters, conference hall, guesthouse, mosque, children's park etc. had been constructed for use by the future plant personnel and their guests of honour, that remained unoccupied and unused for a long time giving way to damp walls where mosses and parasitic plants have mushroomed in abundance.
   Our 46-year long dream seems at last poised to see daylight as International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has of late short-listed eight developing countries with Bangladesh topping the list that deserve nuclear plants to meet their growing energy needs.
   Villagers of Ruppur who have tolerated all these years a sore sight of unused old buildings of the proposed nuclear project and are already old themselves must be keeping their fingers crossed to have a chance to see the nuclear plant operational before they bid adieu to this world. The day perhaps is not far away when train passengers, while crossing the Hardringe Bridge over Padma, will peep through the windows and sneak a look 1000 meters away at a pleasant sight of non-radioactive water vapor venting out from a cooling tower, a jug-like chimney with flared opening, neighboring a cylindrical building containing a nuclear reactor.
   With power generating capacity of Kaptai Hydroelectric Plant dwindling away to a minimum due to lesser water velocity, cost of fuel for other thermal power plants skyrocketing and other alternative power sources like those driven by wind power not feasible in our climate, the news of Ruppur Nuclear Plant's commissioning has opened a new window of hope for Bangladesh.
   It is heartening to hear from our Energy Adviser that giant foreign companies like Daewoo have already approached our government for setting up nuclear power plants in our country with their funding to bear the major portion of cost. Given our energy predicaments and the government's sincerity in resolving the crisis we earnestly hope the first nuclear power plant in Ruppur will be commissioned in a matter of a few years on top priority basis though such a long-term project entails huge costs and meticulous planning. Ours will be a new addition to 435 nuclear power reactors (according to IAEA report) already operating in 31 countries.
   We have reasons to pride ourselves on our excellent foreign policy and non-belligerent state policy that enabled our government to win support of the IAEA for our nuclear power plant whereas Iran's nuclear program, in spite of their earnest publicity and sincere efforts on using nuclear power for peaceful purposes, is still taken by world bodies with a grain of salt.
   
   Feasibility
   The first question that may crop up in our mind is the economic benefit we may derive from a nuclear power plant; the second question is how safe would be such a plant in the context of Bangladesh. A nuclear power plant involves multi-billion dollar investments for construction and maintenance though the fuel required for such a plant is very cheap compared to costly fossil fuel or gas required by conventional power plants.
   Whenever we judge feasibility of anything new, call it a specialized textile factory or a special product in banking business we reflexively enquire whether such new machinery or products have been tested in any neighbouring country like India, Malaysia or China given some kind of commonality in demography, culture and economic background. The very fact that seven nuclear power plants are under construction in neighbouring India and many more in China is itself reassuring to us to go ahead with our plan of nuclear way of producing electricity.
   Because of the large capital cost for nuclear power and the relatively long construction period before revenue is returned, servicing the capital cost of a nuclear power plant is the most important factor determining the economic competitiveness of nuclear energy. Our experience suggests longer period of time a project takes to complete, higher the cost, in many folds beyond projection, ultimately is incurred at the end of the day.
   Construction delays usually add heavily to the cost of a plant, as a power plant does not yield profits during construction period; longer construction time translates directly into higher interest charges on borrowed funds. Even interest-free funds from donor agencies may be costly, as we have to pay back the borrowed fund in SDR (Special Drawing Rights) the value of which must go up with inflationary depreciation of our local currency unless we commission the plant in immediate possible time and cover the cost by exportation of goods benefited by nuclear energy. Modern nuclear power plants may take four years to over a decade, depending on version of the plant. Choosing a version that takes lowest possible time for installation may apparently be costlier compared to those requiring longer time, but time cost in modern economy should be weighed more seriously than other parameters.
   
   Clean, cheapest energy
   Heat is required to boil water and produce steam that drives a turbine for generating electricity. Both nuclear power plants and conventional power plants produce heat; the only difference is mechanism of providing heat. The conventional power plants use gas, coal or oil as fuel source to generate heat and the nuclear plants produce the heat by nuclear fission inside a reactor, a complex process of releasing energy through friction or a kind of 'quarrel' by some atomic particles - enriched uranium is a party in the friction.
   In fact, probability of health hazards posed by a nuclear power plant is much lesser than any other thermal power plants except those powered by wind. Nuclear generation of electricity does not produce pollutants like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury that are directly produced with combustion of fossil fuels; fossil fuels are a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and hence responsible for global warming. Non-radioactive water vapour is probably the only emission from nuclear power plants. That is why France, producing almost 80 per cent of their electricity from nuclear power plants, is known to have the cleanest air of any industrialised country and perhaps the cheapest electricity.
   Pollution from fossil fuels is blamed for many deaths all over the world. According to an estimate of World Nuclear Association, for the same quantity of electricity produced through different modes number of deaths recorded were 885 for hydropower, 342 for coal, 85 for natural gas and 8 for nuclear. However, only wind power is reputed to have caused no deaths at all. In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes comprise less than 180 per cent of total industrial toxic wastes as nuclear power produces far less waste materials than fossil-fuel based power plants. Contrary to our popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power.
   A nuclear-phobia about probable nuclear accident, radiation and hazards related to transport and storage of nuclear wastes, especially after 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl disaster still haunts people. Chernobyl accident, caused by defects in design, is blamed for lack of containment buildings; repetition of such an accident is now impossible with introduction of state of the art failsafe mechanism and multiple layers of reinforcements around vulnerable areas.
   The most significant challenge a nuclear power plant has to face is its waste management and protection of its containment building where the reactor is installed. Nuclear wastes, especially spent fuels, retain their radioactive hazards, known as radiation flux, for a long time and have to be stored and cooled in well-protected chambers for decades. In case of any war, the enemy, however, does not (or should not) target a nuclear plant the way bombardiers shy away from installations marked Red Crescent or Red Cross considering immense casualties to civilians. Still, containment buildings of a nuclear plant are made with robust structures capable of withstanding aircraft strikes so that in no circumstances radiation does escape into the environment.
   
   Wattage capacity
   The first nuclear power plant at Obninsk, USSR produced only 5 megawatts (One megawatt = One million watts) of electricity when commissioned on June 27, 1954 whereas capacity of modern plants has reached more than 350 gigawatts (One gigawatt = 1000 megawatts = One billion watts). While choosing the version of our proposed nuclear power plant, especially that of its reactor, we hope, our policy planners and scientists of our Atomic Energy Commission will remember how technologies get obsolescent almost every year. The computer you have bought this year has to be replaced with a new one or at least refurbished with a new processor next year with processing speed of computers almost doubling at half the price almost every year. Hence, yearly depreciation rate of a computer or a nuclear reactor, usually 5% to 10% in the accountant's book, should reasonably be not less than 20% to 50% in the supersonic technological speed.

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Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani in Cairo

Last month saw a wave of angry sit-in demonstrations held by the Bedouins of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, triggered by the killing of two tribesmen by police in April. And late last month, Bedouin leaders again reiterated their long list of grievances, claiming that state representatives had so far failed to meet their basic demands.
   The Bedouins are an indigenous people living in the Sinai, Saharan and Arab deserts. Their numbers in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, are estimated around 380,000, divided into some 26 different tribes.
   Although most Bedouins now live sedentary lifestyles, they were known until recently for their nomadic way of living and relatively conservative traditions. The Bedouin have often had to struggle for their rights within Egypt. Egypt has a population around 80 million.
   "After promising to look into our complaints, the governor of North Sinai has reversed his position, calling us a bunch of outlaws and smugglers," Mohamed Abu Ras, chief spokesman for the Bedouin of Sinai told IPS. "But if our demands aren't met soon, we're planning to organise more protests."
   The trouble began Apr. 25, when police in northern Sinai opened fire on two members of the Menayaa tribe, killing both of them. According to accounts in the local press, the two had tried to evade a police checkpoint in an unlicenced pickup truck.
   The next day, Bedouin from across the peninsula converged on the Kerem Abu Salem border crossing-precariously located between Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip-to express their outrage. In that politically charged setting, an estimated 2000 tribesmen held an impromptu sit-in demonstration to protest what they see as a policy of official intimidation.
   "The state considers the Sinai Bedouin separate from the rest of Egyptian society to a certain extent," Aida Seif el-Dawla, president of the Cairo-based Egyptian Association against Torture told IPS. "Their sit-in protest was organised in hopes of bringing their longstanding grievances, especially violations against them by police, to the attention of the wider public."
   Since 2004, the Bedouin's worsening relationship with the government has become a source of concern for both sides.
   In October of that year, a triple bomb attack in the resort town of Taba killed 34 people, including several foreign tourists. The bombings were followed by the mass detention of local tribesmen, some of whom were accused-with relatively little evidence-of complicity in the crime.
   "After the 2004 Taba attacks, the authorities launched a campaign of random arrests," said Dawla. "Since then, police have continued to raid suspects' homes, occasionally arresting women and elderly people. There have also been accounts of random killings of Bedouin by police."
   The situation for local Bedouin deteriorated further after subsequent attacks in Sinai targeting other tourist destinations. In July 2005, bomb attacks killed 88 in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh; in April 2006, dozens were killed in a spate of bombings in the seaside town of Dahab.
   The government was quick to blame the crimes on a shadowy Islamist group calling itself "Tawhid wa Jihad", said to have sympathisers among Sinai's Bedouin inhabitants. As after the Taba bombings, both subsequent attacks were followed by the mass arrest of local tribal residents.
   According to close observers of the situation, however, evidence of Bedouin complicity in the crimes has always been scanty at best.
   "There is no proof of a Jihadist movement in the Sinai Peninsula," Diaa Rashwan, a senior analyst at the government-run al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and an expert on Islamist groups told IPS. "All the attacks were accompanied by vague and unconvincing accounts of what happened."
   A chief demand of Bedouin protestors, therefore, has been a halt to police violations against local residents and the release of Bedouin prisoners wrongfully detained since 2004. According to tribal spokesmen, police are still holding some 4,000 local men since the Taba bombings.
   Demonstrators also demanded the economic development of the Sinai Peninsula, which they say has been historically neglected by the government, as well as more employment opportunities for the local population.
   "Central Sinai is among the poorest areas in the world, with rampant unemployment and few basic services available," Hatem al-Buluk, rights activist and resident of al-Arish, located some 50 km from the border, told IPS. Pointing to the five-star resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, he added, "All development on the peninsula is confined to the coasts at the expense of the interior."
   After four days of demonstrations, during which minor clashes between police and armed Bedouin were reported, a deal was purportedly struck between tribal representatives and a delegate from Cairo. On Apr. 29, the latter reportedly pledged to redress Bedouin grievances, releasing two detained relatives of the slain men as a gesture of goodwill.
   To the chagrin of Cairo, the proximity to the border with Israel of the demonstration also gave the incident a national security dimension.
   Although the affair was portrayed in western news media as an attempt by Bedouin to cross into the Jewish state for political asylum, Bedouin leaders adamantly deny this. They maintain that they staged the demonstration at the border in order to pre-empt a heavy-handed police response.
   Under the terms of the 1979 Camp David peace treaty, Egypt is prohibited from stationing significant numbers of police or soldiers on its north-western frontier. Additionally, Cairo is loath to trigger a diplomatic incident at the fraught border with Israel.
   "The Bedouin chose the crossing for their demonstration mainly because police are forbidden to use firearms there," said al-Buluk.
   Rashwan agreed that the choice of the border crossing was a strategic one. "Instead of resorting to violence, Bedouin went to the sensitive border area in hopes of embarrassing the regime into meeting their demands," he explained.
   Despite government vows to improve the Bedouin's lot, however, spokesmen for the Ministry of the Interior-which has jurisdiction over the peninsula-have continued to deny any mistreatment of local inhabitants.
   "There are no transgressions by police in Sinai," Assistant Interior Minister Ahmed Diaa al-Din was quoted as saying in the local press on May 1. "Security agencies intervene only when someone puts himself under suspicion, which, according to law, requires immediate investigation."
   According to local news media, the issue has been largely resolved, with the government promising to make concessions. But local observers say that the sit-in protest, first organised in the wake of the slayings six weeks ago, remains ongoing.
   "Until now, none of the Bedouin's demands have been met," said al-Buluk. "So they have maintained their sit-in strike in Mahdiya, the town from which the two shooting victims hailed."
   Most recently, on Jun. 14, Bedouin leaders convened a conference in the Northern Sinai city of Rafah, at which they accused the government of backtracking. After reiterating their original list of demands, they threatened to return to the border en masse if these were not met by Jul. 1.
   According to Rashwan, the current tension between police and tribesmen stems from a longstanding ignorance on the part of security agencies of the Bedouin mentality.
   "This same lack of understanding of local manners and customs by police also happened in Upper Egypt in the 1990s, which resulted in numerous personal vendettas between officers and local families," he said. "Unfortunately, the police are making the same mistake now in Sinai."
   -Inter Press Service

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Remembering beloved Maissa

Nasrine Karim

It seems yesterday, I was sitting and holding my daughter's hand while she peacefully breathed her last breath. But it was one year ago on the 5th. I remember every minute till she passed away. I even remember calling out to her to wake up and have tea with yummy biscuits that afternoon - she did not answer. I tried to bribe her by saying I had seen some beautiful skirts that she could choose from when she got better. She did not wake up. She never did.
   I thought maybe it was one of those days that she was extra-dozy and often enough she went through those but would wake up and look around with those large beautiful eyes and I knew she was still with us. But no, those expressive eyes that she used to communicate with me, had closed forever in the pleasant English summer night. She was given the most beautiful room in the hospice in London, because everyone knew it was just a matter of time... except perhaps, me. I was always hoping against hope...that it was just another awful phase my baby was going through - that she would come to and everything would be okay. It never did, and nothing will ever be the same for us. Never.
   May Allah bestow His infinite peace in her eternal life. We can only thank Him for such a wonderful gift He had bestowed on us.
   Her cousin Minaal Choudhury wrote from New York:
   Maissa Apa would assuredly have been part of this new breed. She had all the attributes, calibre and finally the all-important attitude necessary.
   Maissa Apa would have been 32. I was looking at her pictures from last year and I mourn the person who was so very warm and guiding to me. Without a doubt, a role model who will influence me forever. I always miss her and will suffer her loss for as long as I live.

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