Court to expose India's dirty nuclear secrets

India's supreme court has agreed to hear a public interest suit which accuses the nuclear industry of callous disregard for the health and well-being of tens of thousands of people living close to the nation's only working uranium mine.

India's supreme court has agreed to hear a public interest suit which accuses the nuclear industry of callous disregard for the health and well-being of tens of thousands of people living close to the nation's only working uranium mine.

The dirty secret of India's nuclear industry - a hidden scandal which has been the ruin of thousands of lives and the cause of serious birth defects - could thus at last be dragged into the light of day. For the first time an industry which has blighted the lives of a large tribal community and devastated their environment will be subjected to public scrutiny.

The uranium discovered up to 2,000ft under the rice paddies and rolling pasture of Jaduguda in the far south-east of the northern state of Bihar is of such low quality that in most countries no one would bother digging it up. But with its post-colonial obsession with self-sufficiency, India has been mining uranium here for 30 years. Today the refined product is sent to all 10 of the country's pressurised heavy water reactors.

However, according to the suit which the supreme court agreed to consider over the weekend, the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) has failed to safeguard the welfare of the people living nearby. A report filed to the court describes the "miserable and deplorable" condition of more than 50,000 people who live within 10km of the mines.

The court's decision is a long-awaited breakthrough for the Adivasis (the native tribal people) of Jaduguda, along with Xavier Dias and his colleagues in the Jharkhandi Organisation Against Radiation who have been fighting to bring attention to the problem. All the people who have suffered from the mining, its by-products and its side-effects are Adivasis.

The whole mining process has had a disastrous impact on the community, from the exposure to radiation of miners sent 2,000ft underground without safety equipment, to the 300,000 tons of waste rock dumped in the vicinity every year. But the critical factor is the presence of three "tailings dams" occupying more than 100 acres, where the "fine tailings" - or waste from the mines - is dumped. This waste contains not only uranium but also other toxic metals such as lead, zinc and arsenic. The tailings dam structures are, in some places, no more than 30 metres from the nearest village houses.

As one scientist recently wrote: "During the dry season the dams run dry and the wind picks up the loose tailings and blows them around. In the monsoon rains the dams overflow into the river. People have also used the dams to graze livestock and play soccer."

And uranium waste is not the only hazardous substance blowing around Jaduguda. When local people began to find syringes and other types of hospital waste buried in the tailings, they realised that medical radiation waste from an unknown number of sources was also being brought to the area's dams for dumping. In the words of one expert, the dams have become "the nuclear waste dump for the entire country".

But official secrecy surrounding nuclear issues in the country, coupled with widespread public apathy about the fate of Adivasis, has made Jaduguda the national scandal no one knows about.

Long exposure to the low-level radiation has caused many different types of damage to the health of the local people. A recent study reported that 30 per cent of women had fertility problems of some sort. Skin diseases, cancers, tuberculosis and nervous system disorders were among the other problems discovered in large numbers.

Most upsetting are the numerous deformed children in the area: children with skeletal distortions, missing eyes or toes, with fused fingers or limbs too weak to support them.

A former chairman of UCIL has stated that "there is no radiation or any related health problem" in the area. For the first time such bland assertions may soon be publicly tested.