SAFETY & SECURITY | INDIA
Containing the threat
The nuclear industry is continuously evolving to deal with emerging threats in nuclear safety and security. Saurav Jha reports on India’s activities and its emergency response capabilities
IN JANUARY 2020, INDIA BECAME the 35th country to join the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) response and assistance network (Ranet) — a group of states that offer assistance to mitigate the consequences of nuclear or radiological emergencies. According to the IAEA, through Ranet, states can ‘register their emergency preparedness and response capabilities, including support for radiation measurements, medical advice or treatment, and specialised equipment thereby enabling the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre to promptly mobilise an assistance team upon request of a State affected by an emergency’. Ranet includes ‘State Parties who have identified national
assistance capabilities that consist of qualified experts, equipment and materials, which could be made available to assist another State’. Such States are considered by the IAEA to be ‘capable and willing to provide, upon request, specialised assistance by appropriately trained, equipped and qualified personnel with the ability to respond in a timely and effective manner to nuclear or radiological emergencies’. India has long been a State Party with such ‘identified’
Saurav Jha
Author and commentator on energy and security, based in New Delhi
capabilities and has been willing to share its expertise with other States, as evidenced by its promotion of the Global Center for Nuclear Energy Partnership located on its soil. India’s participation in Ranet is one of the ways in which the country is fulfilling its obligations under the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, which was adopted in 1986 following the Chernobyl accident. When India joined Ranet in 2020, Elena Buglova, head of the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre, said: “India’s emergency preparedness and response capabilities can now be offered to countries during an emergency, if these countries ask for assistance. This shows a strong commitment by India to strengthen the international framework for nuclear and radiological emergency preparedness and response”. India is party to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, the
Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (and its 2005 amendment) and the Convention on Early Notification of a nuclear accident. It has signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage and participates in the Illicit Trafficking Database. As India has one most active civil nuclear programmes in the world, it is not surprising that India’s evolving safety and security architecture would be of significant interest to policymakers worldwide. As an aside, India’s country auditor was elected as external auditor for the IAEA at the organisation’s general conference in Vienna in September 2021 for a six-year term (2022-27).
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www.neimagazine.com As India joins Ranet, an overview of India’s emergency
response architecture is in order. This is provided by the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, in a report titled Nuclear Safety and Security in India: Emerging Threats and Response Preparedness by Rajeshwari Rajagopalan Pillai and Pulkit Mohan. This is a by-product of the discussions that took place at a virtual closed-door roundtable discussion organised by ORF in December 2020 and contains details about some less- discussed aspects of India’s nuclear emergency response programmes and practices, according to the authors, who say the report ‘identifies the importance of nuclear safety and security by analysing existing programmes, practices, and infrastructures as well as insider threat, emergency response preparedness, and emerging technology threats’. It focuses on institutional architecture, arrangements and
associated training related to the early and intermediate phases of India’s emergency response paradigm. The report delineates the use of integrated command
control and response exercises that focus on testing command and control functions, response mechanisms, and communication. They include: activation of the emergency response framework and response centres; execution of response functions by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and district authorities; effectiveness of the liaison between onsite and offsite facilities for sharing information and making decisions; and checking the response time line for declaration, activation and initial response, as well as coordination between plant and district authorities in preparing media briefings and press releases. The report says that ‘given the proximity of population
centres to nuclear facilities, field exercises and public interactions are an important requirement of emergency management in India’. It highlights the importance of effective communication by DAE in normal times and during the onset of a nuclear emergency.
Emergency response infrastructure The report outlines the onsite and offsite emergency response infrastructure set up by DAE and India’s inter- agency coordination on emergency response. It makes a valuable contribution by highlighting the role played by nonnuclear agencies in assisting DAE as ‘India’s national emergency response system architecture is a combination of the Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network, ERC network, meteorological data network, emergency communication rooms, Crises Management Group, National Technical Research Organisation and the National Disaster Management Authority’.
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