Endorsed by courts and the government, uranium mining continues to create health hazards in Jadugoda. By SAGAR
A 2003 study paper on uranium mining prepared by three former
office-bearers of the UCIL—RC Gupta, AC Kundu and AK Sarangi—notes that “during
the processing of uranium ore, some radio-nuclides are generated and remain in
the tailings.” Surendra Gadekar, a nuclear physicist who conducted a health
survey in Jadugoda in 2001, told me that radionuclides—atoms of the uranium ore
that emit gamma radiation—can cause cancer, besides having other health
hazards. He said that he found that the level of radiation in “some pockets” in
the area was “five–six times higher than normal.” He also added that he came
across several cases of tuberculosis, cancer and congenital defects among the
villagers during his survey.
“I had never seen something like that—there was red and black dust all around in the air,” Kartik Sardar, a 20-year-old resident of Tilaitand village in Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum district, told me. He was describing a dust storm had covered the neighbourhood and its houses one week before my visit to the area, on 20 May. The storm carried particles from a nearby reservoir-like structure, called a tailings pond, containing material that is discharged after the milling of uranium ore. Surendra Das, a shopkeeper in the area, said the intensity of the storm had forced him to keep his shop closed for two hours for three consecutive days during the storm. “You wouldn’t have been visible to me if you stood next to me here,” Sardar added. “It was so suffocating.”
The Tilaitand village,
where the tailings pond is situated, is adjacent to the Hata-Musabani road,
around 32 kilometres south-east of Jamshedpur city, and within two kilometres
from a uranium mine in the Jadugoda town. The Jadugoda town is spread over four
villages—Ichra, Bhatin, Tilaitand and Mechua—and the area contains one of seven
uranium mines in Jharkhand, six of which are in East Singhbhum district, and
one in Saraikela Kharsawan district. Though the mining activities at the
Jadugoda mine are presently suspended, uranium ore from several mines is taken
to the mill, or processing plant, in the area. There are two mills in the East
Singhbhum—at Jadugoda and at Turamdih, a village in the district.
At the plants, after a
process of crushing, wet grinding and leaching—a process through which the ore
is converted into soluble salts—a concentrated uranium compound called uranium
peroxide, or yellowcake, is obtained from the ore. The yellowcake is then
stashed in drums and again transported to the Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) in Hyderabad
for enrichment. During the milling process, a huge amount of nuclear waste is
left behind in liquid form—slurry—which is then expelled into the tailings
ponds through long pipelines that pass through the villages. At the ponds, the
heavy material that forms a part of the nuclear discharge takes a form of
granular sand—this sand is what is termed tailings, and which often gets
carried to the nearby villages during storms.
There are three
tailings ponds in Jadugoda. The structures are surrounded on three sides by
mining hills, and the fourth side contains an embankment, into which the
nuclear waste is released through pipelines. The ponds are constructed and
managed by the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL)—a public-sector
undertaking that functions under the Department of Atomic Energy, which in turn
works directly under the prime minister’s office.
The UCIL is
responsible for the exploration and development of uranium mines in India, and
the management of processing plants at Jaduguda, Turamdih and Tumalapalle in
Andhra Pradesh, where new mines were discovered in 2011. The residents of
Jaduguda refer to the UCIL as the “company.” According to an employee list available on its website, as of February
2015, UCIL employed 4,146 labourers in Jadugoda. According to several
independent scientists who had conducted health surveys in the area, over 90
percent of the mining labourers were residents of the villages surrounding the
mines… read more:
