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Civil nuclear deals with India, Pakistan
Sri Lanka will negotiate civil nuclear cooperation agreements with both India and Pakistan, Atomic Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said. Nuclear technology is used in many fields —such as food and agriculture, human health, environment and water resources. “We are trying to develop applications with friendly countries and we have selected a few areas,” Mr. Ranawaka said.
India has already conveyed to Sri Lanka a draft Comprehensive Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement and is awaiting feedback, authoritative sources said. This follows the first round of talks on civil nuclear cooperation between India and Sri Lanka held in New Delhi in October last year.
The Indian authorities also proposed dates for a further meeting but had not received a response from Sri Lanka, the sources added.
“They did send us a draft agreement,” confirmed Minister Ranawaka. “We have problems with the scope as it is too broad. They have included energy-related activities but we are not going to generate energy using nuclear technology. Therefore, we want to have an agreement related to other applications.”
This is a departure from an earlier position that Sri Lanka was interested in nuclear energy. “We are discussing a similar agreement with Pakistan,” Mr. Ranawaka said. He explained that this was because India was more advanced in certain types of nuclear science applications while Pakistan was ahead in others.
The Minister said these issues would be discussed with India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference in Vienna in September.
Mr. Ranawaka said there were no major issues preventing India and Sri Lanka from finalising the agreement. Significantly, the draft agreement does not address safety issues arising from the rapid proliferation of nuclear power plants in India.
In May last year, Sri Lanka forwarded to India a separate draft memorandum of understanding covering safety threats that could arise in the event of a nuclear mishap there. But India rejected this draft and the two countries started discussions on civil nuclear cooperation, instead.
Last week, the Indian Supreme Court cleared the way for the commissioning of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in South India. Officials from Department of Atomic Energy and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) were quoted as saying the plant’s first unit would be started any time after Wednesday.
The court said, however, that it was important for India, the NPCIL and related authorities to find “a place for a permanent deep geological repository”. “Storing of Spent Nuclear Fuel at the NPP site, in the long run, poses dangerous, long-term health and environmental risks,” the Supreme Court said.
“NPCIL and the Union of India are bound to look at the potentially harmful events and the consequences in future. Noticeably, NPCIL does not seem to have a long-term plan, other than, stating and hoping that in the near future, it would establish a DGR (deep geological repository).”
“We have always raised safety issues with India,” Minister Ranawaka said. But he said India’s argument had consistently been that there was no provision internationally for bilateral agreements on issues of nuclear safety. Instead, there are international laws and conventions (to which both parties are signatories) to tackle such concerns.
“When we flagged the fact that Sri Lanka must be covered in the event something happens at Kudankulam or at the Kalpakkam Nuclear Power Plant, India simply reiterated its position that international law and conventions are sufficient.”
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is continuing with domestic measures to protect itself in the event of a nuclear disaster. “We have already installed equipment to measure radiation levels,” the Minister said.
“We started discussions with other agencies, like the Disaster Management Centre, to draw up an action plan that can be used in the event of an emergency. We have also collected baseline data (of radiation levels) from Colombo to Jaffna and we are planning to complete this project in other areas during the year. This data can be used for comparison purposes.
“I don’t think any major accidents will happen. But we can’t rule it out.”
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