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Nuclear waste dumping in Pakistan
By Adnan Farooq
If the leaching ponds containing the effluents of a milling and leaching plant are not covered in water, the dumped waste can dry up and gets blown all over by winds, as often happens in and near Dera Ghazi Khan
Dr. A. H. Nayyar is Director of the Ali Institute of Education, Lahore. He is a physicist, who retired from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad after serving it for over 30 years. After retirement, he worked at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, dealing with policy issues in education and energy. Dr. Nayyar holds a visiting position at Princeton University, USA, where he studies technical issues in nuclear disarmament. He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.
In an interview with Viewpoint, he describes the hazards dumping of nuclear waste poses to the people of Pakistan. Read on:
How much nuclear waste is created in Pakistan and what are the dangers posed by this waste to our lives?
Let me first describe the different kinds of nuclear waste.
The first is the low level waste resulting from uranium ore processing. Only a few fractions of a kilogram of uranium are extracted out of tons of the ore. The rest, which is in thousands of tons, contains low level radioactivity, and poses health risks to people exposed to it. Radon gas is the main source of risk. This is the situation around uranium milling plants, like the one in Dera Ghazi Khan or Qubul Khel. In the newer uranium mines in Isa Khel, in-situ leaching is being done, and it is not known how much radioactivity is released to the environment from this process.
It has been conclusively shown in India that the health of the population around uranium mines gets seriously hurt by the mining activity, including severe skin ailments, cancers of various kinds, especially of lungs and skin, genetic disorder in new births.
The second is the high level waste from reactors of any kind. In a reactor, an isotope of uranium fissions and gives off energy. The parts in which a uranium nucleus is split are very highly radioactive and remain poisonous for thousands of years. The spent fuel of a reactor consists of such a material. Nobody in the world, nobody, knows what to do with this waste. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this waste is just lying in protective enclosures around the world. Nobody has found a safe way to dispose off this waste. Reactor accidents of the kind of Chernobyl can spew a large amount of such waste into the environment over thousands of square kilometers around the accident site, causing extensive loss of life and agriculture.
Pakistan has three kinds of reactors: power reactors, as in Karachi and Chashma, reactors made to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, as in Khushab, and research reactors as in Nilore, Rawalpindi. Spent fuel from power reactors remains stored in cooling ponds on site, nearly for ever. Spent fuel from plutonium production reactors is reprocessed to extract plutonium and the remaining uranium, and the highly radioactive waste containing fission products is stored in a specially protected waste site. Spent fuel from research reactors is stored as such in storage sites.
We hear about Dera Ghazi Khan when it comes to dumping of nuclear waste. If there are other places too becoming pits for nuclear waste?
Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission holds most of its activities secret, and does not let citizens know where it dumps nuclear waste. Presently the Commission is directly under the Ministry of Defence, and hence its work has become highly confidential. Even when it was under the Ministry of Science and Technology, it would not allow any probing into its activities. We do not know which other places are being used as nuclear waste dumping sites.
Do as citizens we have any right to know about nuclear waste dumping procedures?
Given that radioactivity from nuclear waste directly impacts citizens’ health, it becomes a fundamental right of citizens to know what risks such activities pose to them. If there are dumping sites near a population centre, the activity can seep into ground water and make it unusable. If the leaching ponds containing the effluents of a milling and leaching plant are not covered in water, the dumped waste can dry up and gets blown all over by winds, as often happens in and near Dera Ghazi Khan. It is criminal that the Atomic Energy Commission does not share any information on waste dumping procedures it adopts. In principle, there is the Nuclear Regulatory Authority meant to oversea the work of PAEC. But PNRA is mostly staffed by persons seconded from the Commission, and loyalties die hard.
As Pakistan is not a party to Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty while it has recently signed nuclear deals with China. What will be the implications of these deals for Pakistan’s nuclear program?
Pakistan will get nuclear power reactors manufactured in China on soft payment conditions. The fuel will come from China, and the highly toxic spent fuel will be stored in Pakistan. Each of the new reactors would cost an arm and a leg, and yet each would add only 1.5% to the installed electricity generation capacity. Nuclear electricity is viable only in countries that are short of other options. Many countries of the world have therefore shunned it for ever. The main reasons why Pakistan is insisting on buying new reactors include (a) it wants to secure the same status of global acceptability as a nuclear state as India has acquired after the US-India nuclear deal, overcoming the embargo the international nuclear agreements had imposed on it after the 1998 nuclear tests; (b) nuclear reactors provide a raison d’etre to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.
From VIEWPOINT, Pakistan
http://www.viewpointonline.net/
Doctors and environmentalists warn against ‘sri pai’
By Abdul Manan
LAHORE: People throughout the city are eating the unhealthy and potentially hazardous ‘sri pai’, as these are prepared by burning off the hair of goats with highly toxic gases, doctors and environmentalists told Daily Times on Saturday.
There are two ways to cook sri pai- it can either be cooked by properly mixing the Acetylene gas with Oxygen, or it can be cooked by using various PVC plastic pipes, capacitors and electronic and plastic waste.
CDGL: People throughout the city have established temporary furnaces along roadsides, especially at the corner of every street in the Walled City. The City District Government Lahore (CDGL) officials had previously confiscated gas mixture equipments required for cooking sri pai, with a view that gas cylinders were too dangerous to be allowed at roadside restaurants. Hence, most people have started to use electronic and plastic waste as the tool of choice to burn sri pai at high temperatures.
Health risks: However, various doctors and environmentalists have strongly criticised the burning process that makes use of electronic and plastic wastes. University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Environmentalist Professor Dr AR Saleemi said that burning electronic and plastic waste released highly toxic gases, including Hydrocarbons, Dioxin, Chlorine and Carbon Monoxide. He said that when food is cooked over such toxic gases, it absorbs them and they adversely affect the health of those consuming the food.
He said that burning plastic and electronic waste to release toxic gases damaged the surrounding environment as well. He said that this adversely affected the health of the surrounding residents as well as those who come to consume the food.
He also pointed out that if sri pai was prepared by burning of Acetylene and Oxygen, the same food was not hazardous for health. He said that for those who are fond of eating sri pai, they should properly wash it before cooking it, and a mixture of gases should be used to attain the high temperature required to cook it.
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Ejaz Ahmed Sheikh said that plastic waste emitted carcinogenic gases, which were highly toxic and hazardous for health. He said that these gases could cause serious damage to throat and lungs. He said that sri pai, which is prepared by burning plastic waste, should not be consumed because of the unhygienic preparation processes. He said that cardiac patients should avoid eating the sri pai as it is a very high-protein food.
PHA refills Manto Park lake without repairs
By Afnan Khan
LAHORE: The Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) has allowed the refilling of the artificial lake in Manto Park without repairing its base and boundary walls.
The PHA emptied the one-kilometre-long lake more than a month ago with a view to construct a concrete base and walls of the ancient lake as the constant water seepage from the lake was damaging the base of Minar-e-Pakistan.
Contractors and employees associated with the park told Daily Times that the decision to repair the lake was taken as cracks in its base were contaminating water with sewerage from a nearby drain, besides posing a danger to the foundation of the national monument. Similarly, the seepage was also damaging houses situated on the backside of the lake. There are also complaints from residents about the contamination of drinking water in the area.
Contractor Abid Hussain, who maintains the lake, said that the authorities had decided to drain water from the lake to repair it for leakages, which could damage the monument. However, another contractor, Tariq, said that the water seepage had not caused any damage to the monument so far. It was decided to refill the lake after a meeting with Project Director Yaqoob Chaudhry and other officials to entertain visitors on Eid, he added. The contractor said that water pumps had been turned on to refill the lake, adding that the lake would be ready for boating one week before Eid.
A park employee said that the lake was being refilled because contractors and the PHA were keen to make money on Eid through boating and operating a swing installed in the middle of the lake. The employee said that fish from the drain enter the lake through cracks and kill farm fish kept in the lake.
Minar-e-Pakistan Project Director Yaqoob Chaudhry said that the government had not released funds in time for the lake repair. He said contractors would lose a major portion of their profit if the lake was not opened on Eid.
Precautions: The director said that the stoppage of seepage was a precautionary measure, adding that it was not causing any damage to the monument. He said that the lake had been purged of parasite fish, adding that the repair work would start after the funds were released after Eid.
