Is Haridwar The Right Place To Build A Nuclear Power Plant?
· Free Press Journal
The Ganges is the most revered river of India and is a central pillar of our culture and spirituality. Haridwar, located on the banks of the Ganga, is one of our holiest cities and is also central to the spiritual liberation that forms one of the pillars of Hinduism. Why on earth then would Haridwar be selected as the site for Uttarakhand’s first major nuclear power plant?
Visit grenadier.co.za for more information.
The Modi government’s explanation for setting up a 1000 MW nuclear power plant in the Buggalwala area of Haridwar is that it offers a strategic location close to the Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd unit, which produces turbo generators for power plants, thereby providing the necessary logistics for a large-scale energy project like a nuclear facility.
A nuclear power plant located in Uttarakhand will help tackle the power deficit that North India is presently facing. Plus, this is part of the ambitious goal the government has set to triple its nuclear capacity to 100 GW by 2047. Public sector entities like the NTPC and NPCIL have been roped in to initiate site studies for the Haridwar nuclear plant as also for new nuclear energy plants spread across Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
But is Haridwar the most appropriate place to start such a venture?
The entire state of Uttarakhand sits over a highly tectonic belt, and the Bureau of Indian Standards recently placed this state in the Seismic Zone VI highest-risk category, largely because this region is susceptible to severe tremors. Critics argue that even though modern nuclear reactors are built to withstand heavy earthquakes, the compounding risks of localised fault lines, landslides, and dam failures can make nuclear containment an extremely hazardous operation.
Environmentalists warn that nuclear plants require massive quantities of water for cooling. Drawing enormous amounts of water from the adjacent Ganges or depleting the region’s already scarce water tables will alter the river’s delicate hydrology, causing severe water shortages downstream.
A radioactive leak can prove a devastating threat to Haridwar’s population and also to its local ecology. As it is, the Buggawala site is located close to the New Delhi-Dehradun express highway recently inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Critics question the wisdom of placing a hazardous megaproject adjacent to a densely populated urban zone.
Uttarakhand’s record of constructing dams and hydroelectricity plants remains one of the worst in the country. The Kedarnath 2013 tragedy, which resulted in the death of over 10,000 people, and also flash floods in the Chamoli district in February 2021, which destroyed two power projects, leaving over 300 dead, cannot be overlooked.
We must also remember that the Ganges remains one of the world’s most polluted rivers. This severe contamination is driven by untreated sewage, toxic industrial effluents from cities along its banks, and untreated domestic wastewater being discharged in huge quantities, thereby creating dangerously high levels of faecal coliform. The government under its Namami Ganga revival project has already spent over Rs 25,000 cr in cleaning up this river to little avail.
Dr CP Rajendran, adjunct professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies and an expert on earthquakes, has emerged as a vociferous critic against this project. “A nuclear plant that requires enormous quantities of water, such as the one in Haridwar, can result in river depletion and thermal or radioactive discharge going into the water. Further, Uttarakhand falls within high-risk seismic zones (Zones 4 and 5), and building heavy nuclear infrastructure in a fragile earthquake-prone Himalayan ecosystem poses a catastrophic disaster risk,” he points out.
Proponents, including the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), argue that establishing plants in the plains (like Haridwar) is necessary. They argue it is physically safer to build in the relatively flat plains than in the fragile, landslide-prone higher Himalayan region. These officials further maintain that before any construction begins at Buggawala, the site must undergo thorough technical testing by NPCIL teams and secure clearances from both the central government and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.
It would be pertinent for us to remember the three nuclear reactor mishaps the world has seen so far. In March 1979, there was coolant leakage in one of the units of the nuclear energy plant in Three Mile Island in the US, triggered by a design flaw. The disaster was contained, and no deaths occurred, though the cleanup cost worked out to over $1 billion.
In Chernobyl in April 1986, a reactor core meltdown from leakage of the coolant resulted, according to the UN, in 4,000 long-term deaths in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and 6,000 deaths across Europe, as per a report by the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. Nuclear rehabilitation alone cost around $85 billion, according to stats compiled by nuclear expert Dr Bharat Karnad.
The earthquake and tsunami-induced nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, caused by grid failure and failure of the electric backup to cool the reactor, leading to breach in containment and the spread of “radioactive contaminants”. The clean-up cost $70 billion, and decontamination of the environment, and compensation to the people cost another $188 billion.
If a disaster were to occur in Haridwar, who will pay for the cost of cleaning up and for the massive rehabilitation exercise of those who do manage to survive? Instead of coming up with a strict liability clause, the government has significantly weakened the supplier liability clause. The recent SHANTI Act, 2025, has repealed the earlier strict 2010 Civil Nuclear Liability Damage Act, eliminating the operator’s statutory right of recourse against equipment suppliers in the event of a nuclear accident.
But given how accident prone the Himalayas are and its history of recurring earthquakes, the NPCIL would be well advised to move ahead cautiously and chose a less accident-prone region to build the nuclear power plant.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.