Pakistani Villagers Pay the Price of Nuclear Ambitions
    By Zofeen Ebrahim
    Inter Press Service

    Wednesday 31 May 2006

    Karachi - "We've been treated worse than animals," says Nazeer Buzdar, his voice cracking with emotion over the telephone. "We were the ones who helped make Pakistan a nuclear power. But now that we're suffering, there is no one to even hear us out."

    Buzdar was speaking to IPS from Baghalchur, a remote tribal village, unremarkable except for its uranium mines, in moutainous Dera Ghazi Khan district, some 400 km north of this southern port city.

    From 1978 to 2000 Baghalchur provided the secretive Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) with the 'yellow cake' it needed for its nuclear programme, the success of which was dramatically announced to the world, in 1998, through a series of tests.

    In 2000, by PAEC's own admission, "mining was stopped on the exhaustion of uranium". But that was when the villagers' troubles began because the site was then converted into a storage and disposal site for radioactive uranium waste.

    And now, Baghalchur is back in the headlines - this time as an embarassment to the PAEC. The local people have gone to the Supreme Court with a complaint that nuclear waste dumped in the area had contaminated the environment and affected the health of both humans and animals.

    Affected are some 50,000 people who live in hamlets scattered around Baghalchur and the 500,000-strong population of nearby Dera Ghazi Khan town. The area is dominated by Balochi tribes.

    According to Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and internationally-known peace activist, the fact that ordinary villagers, who are normally frightened of confronting the government on even minor matters, have dared to take the powerful PAEC to court was a sign of the enormity of the problem.

    "I think this shows how desperate they have become for their own safety and the safety of their livestock. It is truly unfortunate that the PAEC is not listening to them and is merely trying to cover up its tracks, while using its clout in the courts to prevent their access to justice," he says.

    "We had one of the finest pedigreed livestock in this part of the country, but now they don't survive. It is normal to find cows developing large hooves that fester. We have been observing this for the past three years," says Buzdar.

    He also speaks of abnormalities among the local people. "I can give you scores of examples but in my own family, my sister-in-law recently gave birth to twin daughters, and both had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. One of the twins died after a month. You will find many born with no palate. Our children are forever falling sick and most run very high temperatures and then die, mostly of cancer."

    PAEC has defended itself in a press statement that said the body "performs surveillance of the area for the presence of radioactivity in water, vegetation and air, and as per the survey, no radioactivity has been found in any of these sources. There is, therefore, no reason for a large-hoofed cow due to radiations."

    It added: "The areas in use are fenced and guarded, with no chances of unauthorised entry. Hundreds of PAEC workers had been involved in mining uranium from Baghalchur during 30 years of mining operation, who maintained a residential colony at this site. Thanks to foolproof safety measures, no adverse radiation effects were ever detected in any of them or their family members."

    But Buzdar contests that. "About six months back, the commission started dumping close to 1,000 drums into the front yard of its facility. This is fenced and guarded but we could see the drums from across the road where we live. When this was reported in the media about two months ago, the drums were removed from sight and taken indoors," explains Buzdar.

    Complaints by the local people to the border military police proved to be in vain. "We even held a protest rally one night to stop the activity, but even that did not get us any positive results."

    Buzdar, along with other locals then lodged a formal complaint in the Supreme Court. The apex court has asked the PAEC to provide evidence that could dispel the fears of the villagers.

    Under intesne media scrutiny, PAEC has stuck to its guns, vehemently denying allegations of radioactive leakage from the stored drums. In an interview with IPS over e-mail and telephone, a PAEC spokesman insisted that "only uranium-contaminated solid waste is being stored/disposed at Baghalchur" and that "storage prior to disposal is an internationally accepted practice".

    While the Baghalchur villagers wait for the verdict of the apex court with confidence nuclear physicists are sceptical.

    Prof. Khalid Rashid, a former PAEC employee who currently teaches Mathematical Modelling and Simulation at the Bahria University, in Islamabad, says what is important is to carry out a survey that would reveal "the effects on health of the people of Baghalchur".

    Looking at the records for the last 30 years, that are kept in the district hospital, would give some clue, says Rashid. He added that, as far back as in 1982, a medical doctor at the hospital had told him that the incidence of leukemia among Baghalchur residents was about six times higher than the national average.

    But, however much the commission tries to argue about safe storage and disposal, experts say that nuclear waste disposal is major issue the world over.

    "There is no perfectly safe option," says Rashid. "This is an unsolved problem and the real price of nuclear power as well as of nuclear weapons." He listed various options for disposal that seemed to belong in the realm of science fiction: "Storing it deep underground in geologically stable areas; entombment under the seabed, nuclear transmutation and shooting nuclear waste into the space or the sun."

    "Baghalchur is in no way suited for a storage site for the obvious reason that it is geologically dynamic," said Hoodbhoy, who is professor of physics at the Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

    "The safety and environmental problems that uranium mining brings, as in the case of Baghalchur, are of two kinds," said Hoodbhoy. "On the one hand dangerous chemical poisons (such as arsenic, uranium, molybdenum, and other heavy metals) find their way into the soil, air, and water. But still more threatening is the radon gas and its various radioactive products. Near uranium mines, there are tiny dust particles containing various radionuclides. Easily spread by the wind, this dust creates cancers and genetic damage."

    Nuclear power cannot be produced without risk, says Rashid. "Radioactive waste will be produced and there is always the possibility of an accident. The radioactive dirt will stay on for thousands of years. The nuclear lobby is bankrupt and more interested in business than the welfare of the people."

    Through the debate, the PAEC has continued to make its claims of foolproof safety. ""We know what we're doing. There is no crisis and there is no evil going on," said the PAEC spokesman. " We have no interest in creating an unsafe environment for the citizens of Pakistan."

    Asked if the PAEC has carried out any scientific analysis of the area in question the spokesman says: "We do periodic monitoring as per international standards and our technical personnel were sent to the area to check leakages after media reports."

    "Not one person from the commission has visited the area in months," was Buzdar's response to that claim.

    Dr A.H Nayyar, visiting fellow, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, who is also a physicist and peace activist refuses to buy the PAEC line. "Some six or seven years ago, workers at the mines and milling plant in D.G. Khan had gone on strike for not being provided proper safety gear, and sufficient health facilities. Nobody knows what happened to the strike or the strikers. But it goes to prove that the commission was not taking care of all the safety aspects."

    According to Zia Mian, currently research scientist with the programme on science and global security at Princeton University, the PAEC has "hidden behind walls of secrecy since it was founded 50 years ago. It has never been accountable to parliament, the law, or the public. Nuclear facilities and the radioactive materials they process are far too dangerous to people and the environment to be managed without strong independent legal and public accountability".

    "Nuclear operators, in our case the PAEC, are not always known to be careful abut protecting the public against harmful radioactivity. It is because of this lack of trust that nuclear regulatory authorities are established to act as a watchdog. Like any regulatory authority, this has also to be independent but the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) has had a questionable history," says Nayyar.

    So far, the PNRA has made no statement on the issue and, according to Nayyar, "it is conspicuous by its quietness, even when so much has appeared in the press and the highest court is dealing with the matter."