Articles by M V Ramana

The November 2009 exposure of employees at the Kaiga nuclear power plant to tritiated water is not the first instance of high radiation exposures to workers. Over the years, many nuclear reactors and other facilities associated with the nuclear fuel cycle operated by the Department of Atomic Energy have had accidents of varying severity. Many of these are a result of repeated inattention to good safety practices, often due to lapses by management. Therefore, the fact that catastrophic radioactive releases have not occurred is not by itself a source of comfort. To understand whether the dae's facilities are safe, it is therefore necessary to take a closer look at their operations. The description and discussion in this paper of some accidents and organisational practices offer a glimpse of the lack of priority given to nuclear safety by the dae. The evidence presented here suggests that the organisation does not yet have the capacity to safely manage India's nuclear facilities.

India and Pakistan have been talking peace since 2003, yet they have continued to expand their nuclear arsenals. This suggests a failure both of imagination and of political will to seriously engage with the nuclear danger. The peace process does not seem to recognise the fact that since the two countries conducted their nuclear tests in 1998 there has been a war and a major military crisis, both prominently featuring nuclear threats. Nuclear denial in south Asia is not a symptom of inattention, or passivity in the face of an overwhelming problem. It is deliberate blindness to the contradiction between word and deed. India and Pakistan talk of peace while pouring scarce resources into developing their nuclear arsenals, the infrastructure for producing and using them, and doctrines aimed at fighting a nuclear war.

Ideas Have Consequences M V Ramana On October 1 of this year, speaking at the council on foreign relations, New York, Indian external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said,

Economics of Nuclear Power: Subsidies and Competitiveness M V RAMANA In his response Ramana et al (2005), Sudhinder Thakur argues (December 3, 2005) that some of the inputs used in our paper are wrong and that if

A vast amount of literature has been generated on the Chernobyl accident in April 1986. What lessons can we draw from the causes and sequences of the accident, the health and environmental consequences and what implications does the accident have for nuclear reactor safety and the future of atomic energy?