By Misria Shaik Ali, PhD
In 2016, farmer K. Ramanjaneyulu from MC Palle village in Andhra Pradesh, India, observed that the water in his agricultural borewell had turned white. Gangi Reddy, another farmer from MC Palle, observed the same in his farm and tasted the water. “It tasted salty,” he said. I asked him, “why did you taste it when something was visibly wrong?” He said, “it’s a general practice to understand the water. It’s our land and we had to care for it.” The farmers’ practices of care let the water enter through the porous boundaries between their body and their farms. Pulla Reddy noted, on behalf of his father Jayaram Reddy, “when the crops were not growing, my father thought that the problem was with the soil. We procured healthy soil and organic compost and spread it across the surface and yet, the crops showed no growth.” Initially, all the farmers in the area assumed that it was a problem with the water and soil in their individual farmlands. But one evening at racchabanda,[i] where villagers catch up with each other under the evening breeze, the farmers realized that it was not a matter of individual struggle but collective suffering.[ii]
At the racchbandha, a farmer shared that his crops were showing no growth. Jayaram Reddy shared that no technique seemed to address the issue. Another farmer immediately chimed in and said the water in the borewell looked white and salty. Eight farmers, using the personal finances of the village head, M Srinath Reddy, decided to send water samples from their borewells to the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology Laboratory. Results showed that the uranium concentration in the samples ranged between 40.35-405.32 particles per billion (ppb) against the safe level of 60 ppb as prescribed by India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). The farmers came into relations with each other under the ionizing effect of irradiation forging, radioactive kinship.
MC Palle and Kottala are two villages in the YSR District, and agriculture has been the predominant livelihood in these villages for over 200 years, with profitable yields. However, after India’s public sector undertaking Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) commissioned the Tummalapalle Mine and Mill (TUMM) in the region in 2012, farmers Pulla Reddy, Ramanjaneyulu, among others, faced an initial loss of USD 25,000[iii] and USD 5,000[iv] (1USD=80INR) respectively. Besides the financial loss, every villager faces skin diseases, cancer, kidney diseases, or endometriosis and every second family faces spontaneous abortions or undergoes medically-assisted abortions due to “fetal abnormalities.”
A cattle holder told me, “ask the authorities to come and have our food to know what we face!”.[v] Ramanjaneyulu said, “No living being can drink this water. It turns into poison in the body and we are destined to use it for our livelihood. We will die drinking this water.”[vi] At MC Palle and Kottala, radiation leaks through porous boundaries that separate the mine’s tailing pond (TP) from the village; national development from more-than-human well-being; official reports that shift responsibility, from farmers’ care for their soil, water and food; scientific expertise from agricultural knowledge. In between these worlds, trust between the community and the nuclear state, like radioactivity, decays.
In this essay, I focus on elements that forge the above worlds into porous relations. I demonstrate that UCIL lost the trust of the villagers through constant assertions of the safety design of the TP even as villagers claimed that it failed to protect them from irradiation leading to a sharp dualism between safety and protection in the extant regulatory practice. I show that it is the material discourse of nuclear safety (and not the lack of nuclear safety) that leads to distrust in nuclear energy. “Nuclear safety” regulations do not always lead to the protection of health and the environment and this essay critiques the scholarly trend that imagines mistrust in nuclear energy as emergent from mere political positions (anti-/pro-nuclear) or that it can be repaired by making safer, community-centered technologies.[vii] I brew a disinterest for nuclear-safety-oriented scholarship and enliven the interest for the experiments on radioporosity reminding that the established boundary between nuclear containment and the world is always-already porous.
Nuclear Safety: The Knowledge Framework of Nuclear Distrust
The 2016 contamination was brought to the notice of the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB). In 2007, the APPCB gave consent for UCIL to establish the mine only if it meets the pollution control stipulation for the TP namely lining it with “bentonite with minimum 500mm layer, with 250 microns of polyethylene layer, with adequate protective layer of clay or sand of 250 mm” (APPCB 2007). After assessing the results, APPCB reasoned that the “increase of concentrations of Uranium may be due to… the lining of TP” and asked UCIL to provide photographic evidence to attest that it has met the pollution control stipulations. UCIL replied that it lined the TP with “appropriate clay material with desired thickness attaining stipulated permeability,” according to the nuclear “safety guidelines” by the “AERB” (Pranesh 2018). It asserted “no possibility of percolation” simply because it followed the safety guidelines.[viii]
For UCIL, lining the pond according to the nuclear safety guidelines was sufficient as it anoints the nuclear facility as “safe.” Through merely a nuclear safety-driven regulatory practice, the UCIL lapsed the concern for protecting the water and air of the villages—noticeable in the care of the farmers who tasted the water. Radiation as it permeates through the porous clay-lined TP moves from a regime of nuclear safety into the world wanting protection. Whereas, measures to protect the water and air were comfortably ignored as the APPCB pointed out: “UCIL has not lined… [with] Polyethylene layer… But they should have… as an extra precautionary measure” (APPCB 2019).
The International Atomic Energy Association claims that “‘safety’ concerns… maintaining control over (radioactive) sources whereas (radiation) protection” involves “controlling exposure to radiation… Radiation protection… is very much simpler if the source in question is under control… safety necessarily contributes towards protection.”[ix] This belief sediments global nuclear regulation philosophy and in nuclear enactments, it emerges as the nuclear safety episteme i.e. safely designed and operated technologies, and radiation emissions at safe levels will protect people and the environment from irradiation. However, designing for safety does not always guarantee protection, as observed in the case of TUMM. Villagers’ claims on the lapse of radiation protection that called the epistemic belief in nuclear safety into question, were ironically addressed through assertions that were rooted in the very episteme. The technoscientific belief in safety constrains establishing the source of harm and consequently, the episteme (and not a safety mishap) forecloses practices that could increase the trust between the community and the nuclear industry.
Distrust in Remediation
The result of nuclear safety (episteme) is the irradiation of food, water, and agriculture. I term this as “nuclear neglect,” where radioactive contamination is neglected, not because industries do not want to accept safety mishaps, but they neglect and evade accountability because of their firm epistemic belief that “safety necessarily contributes towards protection”. Without taking accountability, UCIL proposed that it will carry out two Corporate Socio-Responsibility (CSR) projects—one to recharge the soil with organic compost and another, a desalination project. In stories from irradiated lands where the source of harm is seldom attributed to radiation risks of nuclear operations, responsibility without accountability for the harm done is commonplace—often, to minimize public criticism [x], and to increase public (and not community) trust.[xi]
While the soil remediation project has not begun, UCIL constructed Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant for clean water. However, people often claim that the water supplied is basically irradiated water from another village signalling the crisis of community trust in UCIL.[xii] However, the distrust in the industry barely translates into an anti-nuclear/uranium agitation at Tummalapalle making it not a matter of political position.[xiii] Many villagers do not want the mine to close as they want UCIL to acquire their contaminated residential and agricultural lands and compensate them with employment and health insurance. Thereby, the distrust emerges as a rather parasitical co-dependency between the mine and the community. I spoke to a farming couple who have faced two spontaneous abortions and are of the few in the village who “want UCIL to leave…” They said, “the Government have not even kept their promises (like compensation). How are we to believe [UCIL] will remediate our soil?”[xiv]
Experimenting with Radioporosity
Against precarity, Ramanjaneyulu is committed to remediating his soil by understanding how water relates with the food grown on his agricultural land. In 2016, when some of his banana plants failed to flower, he realized that growing water-intensive crops like bananas likely leads to loss. He reasoned that “growing fruits would only mean high radioactive content in crop as fruits have high water content. It may not be the same with groundnuts and if I use rainwater.”[xv] Before, he distributed water onto the farm from sunrise to sunset. Now, for his groundnut plantation, he drives to his farm every hour to distribute borewell water for 15 minutes, returns and through the season, waits for the rain to help his yield. Since the electric motor for the water pump should not be frequently switched on and off, it wears off quickly, increasing cost.
The drip pipes that channel the underground contaminated water onto the land, are marked with white spots of sedimented contaminants around its drip holes. Through these porous holes, the uranium in the underground water enters the soil and food. As UCIL refuses to provide images of TP construction, the farmers use these white spots as testaments of radioporosity. As the contaminated water clogs the porous holes, Ramanjaneyulu often has to use acid to clean the drip pipes using his gloved hands. Figuring out how to grow food in contaminated lands and caring for food safety has increased his labour and the cost of investment in technologies, chemicals, and soil recuperation. Sitting on his irradiated farm, I told him, “you are the true scientist. While some call themselves scientists after damaging lands, you are trying to make life on damaged land.”[xvi] Initially, Ramanjaneyulu was shy and later, confidently, he shared his plans for future experiments on radioporosity.
Radioporosity helps scientists view radiation as being permeable and porous much in contrast to how the nuclear safety regime that emphasizes containment constructs it.[xvii] Ramanjaneyulu acknowledges radioporosity and dwells in the interrelations between radiation, water, soil, food, and body as radiation is shoved into lived realities by the denial safety regime. Nuclear studies scholars claim that incorporating ways of knowing radiation risks into nuclear science can help build trust in nuclear technologies and their safety.[xviii] They seldom question the nuclear safety episteme itself and, their attention towards making safety standards robust obscures the presence of irradiated realities that demand [social] scientific assistance for experiments on radioporosity. The attention may need to go beyond building trust in nuclear science, by producing a knowledge repository on radioporosity and dwelling in relation with radiation. As social and scientific studies focus on strengthening the safety standards and the government and industry emphasize the need for public trust in the nuclear safety episteme, farmers experiment to protect food and the future.
[i]Racchabanda is an elevated platform around the biggest tree in the village and it operates as a “community asset” to collectivize (rather than individualize) emotions and knowledges (Fortun 2022).
[ii] See Das et al. (2010).
[iii]Pulla Reddy, interview, October 18, 2021.
[iv]Ramanjaneyulu, interview, October 22, 2021.
[v]Livestock Holders, interview, October 24, 2021
[vi]Ramanjaneyulu, interview, September 24, 2021
[vii]See Verma and Djokić (2021) and Solomon (2021). Verma and Djokić (2021) argue that the pro and anti-nuclear position engender mistrust and claim that scientists need to learn to critique the technologies that they create. Their criticism centers nuclear technologies whereas this essay centers irradiated lives as nuclear technologies have already failed them. Making future technologies safer is a concern for nuclear science and most frequently, not for irradiated publics as remediation is.
[viii] See Government of India and Department of Atomic Energy PSU Section (2022).
[ix]See IAEA (2016), pp. 132, my emphasis. To read more on the “nuclear differentiation” between nuclear safety and radiation protection, see Shaik Ali (2022)
[x]See John and Cynthia (2017)
[xi]See Barnett et al. (2020)
[xii]See MECON Limited (2020, 317).
[xiii] See endnote viii.
[xiv]Farmers couple, interview, October 21, 2021.
[xv] Ramanjaneyulu, interview, October 22, 2021.
[xvi] Ramanjaneyulu, interview, October 22, 2021.
[xvii] To conceptualize radioporosity, I am thinking with Cram (2016, 100) and Mukherjee (2020, 170)
[xviii] See Verma and Djokić (2021) and Wynne (1992).
Figure 1: Image showing how contaminated water creates white patches when distributed on banana plantation.
Figure 2: Image showing white patches around drip-holes in irrigation pipes through which borewell water is distributed. On the background are images of stunted banana plants.
