Outcry and fear as Pakistan builds new nuclear

reactors in dangerous Karachi

A tuk tuk transports students home from school between apartment buildings in the
Khadda Market area, one of the oldest and most densely populated neighborhoods of
Karachi. Pakistan is building an additional nuclear power plant just outside the city.
(Max Becherer/Polaris Images For The Washington Post)

By Tim Craig-March 5 at 12:54 PM

KARACHI, Pakistan World leaders have fretted for years that terrorists may try to
steal one of Pakistans nuclear bombs and detonate it in a foreign country. But some
Karachi residents say the real nuclear nightmare is unfolding here in Pakistans largest
and most volatile city.
On the edge of Karachi, on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and
not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall,

China is supplying two large nuclear reactors for energy-starved Pakistan.

The new plants utilizing a cutting-edge design not yet in use anywhere in the world
will each supply 1,100 megawatts to Pakistans national energy grid. The reactors are
being built next to a much smaller 1970s-era reactor located on a popular beach where
fishermen still make wooden boats by hand.
But the new ACP-1000 reactors will also stand less than 20 miles from downtown
Karachi, a dense and rapidly growing metropolis of about 20 million residents.
Now, in a rare public challenge to the Islamabad governments nuclear ambitions,
some Pakistanis are pushing back. Of all places to locate a reactor, they argue, who
could possibly make a case for this one?
You are talking about a city one-third the
population of the United Kingdom, said
Abdul Sattar Pirzada, a Karachi lawyer who
is seeking to get the project halted. If there
would be an accident, this would cripple
Karachi, and if you cripple Karachi, you
cripple Pakistan.

The Karachi Nuclear Power Complex is

located on the edge of Karachi. (Max
Becherer/Polaris Images For The
Washington Post)

According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory

Commission, a new reactor should be sited
away from very densely populated
areas, preferably with fewer than 500
people per square mile within a 20-mile
radius. That zone around Karachis power
plant holds about 6,450 people per square
mile, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani nuclear
physicist, wrote in Newsweek Pakistan last

year.
The U.S. government has also expressed concern about the initiative, in particular
about Chinas role in providing nuclear technology to Pakistan.
Caught off-guard by the opposition, political leaders have rushed to defend one of
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs top priorities addressing the energy shortfall that can
plunge households nationwide into darkness for half the day. Pakistan, one of the few
developing countries still pursuing civilian nuclear energy options since the
2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, has three operative nuclear power plants, including
the Canadian-built reactor in Karachi, but has turned to China for help expanding its
capacity. Efforts are underway to double the size of the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant
in northern Punjab province. as well as to build the new Karachi reactors.

The risks are there. You cannot discount them, but you prepare for them, said
Khwaja Asif, Pakistans water, power and defense minister. We are a nuclear power,
so dont underestimate us.
China developed the ACP-1000 reactor, which cost about $5 billion each to build, after
studying and refining the design of a reactor that France built in China in the 1980s.
The China National Nuclear Corporation is now supplying the ACP-1000 reactor to
Pakistan, despite an international ban on the transfer of nuclear technology to
Pakistan because of the countrys refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
We are going to be the guinea pigs, said Arif Belgaumi, a Karachi architect who
wants the international community to pay closer attention to the governments plans.
China joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group whose members agree not to transfer to
non-signers any technology that could be used to develop a nuclear weapon in 2004.
But it claims it had already promised to help Pakistan, allowing it to continue
developing the reactors.
China is helping Pakistan build reactors at the same time that the Obama
administration is trying to implement a 2008 deal that would smooth the way for U.S.
companies to invest in new nuclear power plants in India. India, which first tested a
nuclear weapon in 1974 and remains Pakistans chief rival, has also balked at signing
the nonproliferation treaty. Both President Obama and former president George W.
Bush have sought an exception for India.
Chinas expanding civilian nuclear cooperation with Pakistan raises concerns and we
urge China to be transparent regarding this cooperation, the U.S. Embassy said in a
statement Thursday.
Until now, Pakistani leaders have faced little public discontent over the countrys
nuclear advances. After all, Pakistan celebrates a national holiday each May
marking the anniversary of its first atomic weapons test in 1998.
But the countrys progressive movement is evolving, sparking
novelconfrontations between activists and government over environmental and public
safety issues. And the prospect of 20-story reactors rising next to a public beach used
for swimming, camel rides and picnics is a vivid illustration of whats at stake.
Though international monitors generally give Pakistan satisfactory reviews for
safeguarding nuclear materials, industrial accidents causing hundreds of fatalities
remain common here. There are concerns that Pakistani technicians wont be able to
operate or maintain the Chinese nuclear technology.

Karamat Ali, chairman of the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research,
noted that the world has already experienced three major nuclear accidents at Three
Mile Island in the United States in 1979 and at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union
in 1986, in addition to the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
Those are three highly advanced countries, Ali said. This is Pakistan. We dont live
on technology and science. In fact we are quite allergic to that.
Of particular concern is the threat of terrorism, especially considering Karachis long
history of head-scratching security lapses.
Terrorists overran a Pakistani naval base in Karachi in 2011, killing five people and
setting several aircraft on fire. A similar attack occurred last June, but this time
Pakistan Taliban militants stormed a section of Karachi International Airport, killing
about two dozen people. And in September, al-Qaeda militants, perhaps with help
from renegade sailors, attempted to hijack a heavily armed Pakistan navy frigate
docked in Karachis port. It took hours for security forces to repel the assault.
If a major attack or accident were to occur at a nuclear power plant, activists say there
would be unimaginable chaos.
A city whose population has doubled in just the past two decades, Karachi includes
vast, packed slums, as well as districts under the thumb of criminal gangs and Islamic
militants. And with more than 2.7 million registered cars, buses, rickshaws and
motorcycles, it can take hours to cross from one side of the city to another.
You couldnt even dream of evacuating Karachi, said Hoodbhoy, the physicist. The
minute an alarm was sounded, everything would be choked up. There would be
murder and mayhem because people would be trying to flee. Others would be trying to
take over their homes and cars.
But Azfar Minhaj, general manager of Karachis reactor project, said Pakistan sought
the ACP-1000 reactor because it makes a radiation leak far less likely. Each reactor will
have a double containment structure capable of withstanding the impact of a
commercial airliner, he said, adding that there is also an elaborate filtration system
and that the reactor will be able to cool itself for 72 hours without power.
If a new car comes with an airbag, would you start thinking, This is a new feature, its
never been tested in Pakistan, never built in Pakistan. Should we use it or not?
Minhaj asked.
Because of the enhanced safety features, Minhaj said, authorities are planning for an
impact zone no greater than three miles in the event of a worst-case accident. Most of

the affected residents would be asked to shelter in place, not evacuate, he said. Even
today, the no-go zones around the Chernobyl and Fukushima plants are 18 and 12
miles respectively, Hoodbhoy points out.
Minhaj said concerns about the effect of a tsunami are also overblown because the new
reactors are being built on a rock ledge about 39 feet above sea level. Pakistans
meteorological office recently concluded that Karachi could face a tsunami of up to 23
feet in the event of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in the region.
Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
said he suspects the new Chinese design is indeed less prone to accidents. But he noted
that most poorer countries have shied from developing a nuclear energy footprint since
Fukushima.
If there was a lesson we learned from the Fukushima accident, its that, if you are
going to get into the nuclear business, and if you dont have world-class technology,
good logistics, enough personnel, a lot of money and experience managing crisis
situations, then you are not going to be able to manage a severe accident, Hibbs said.
Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist at the Program of Science and Global Security at
Princeton University who is also fighting the project, notes that the existing Canadian
reactor was designed in the 1960s to generate just 100 megawatts of electricity. The
new reactors will produce 22 times that amount and use a combined 40 to 60 tons of
enriched-uranium fuel each, he said. And each year, one-third of that spent fuel will
also be removed from the core and stored in large containment pools at the plant,
Mian said.
You put all of that together, and the hazards are unimaginably larger, he said.
After Sharif showed up in Karachi in December 2013 to break ground on the new
reactors, Pirzada and other activists began organizing against it on Facebook. Last
summer, they filed a lawsuit against the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the
Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority alleging that construction began without a
proper environmental impact study.
In December, a court halted vertical construction but allowed excavation work to
continue until a new environmental assessment is completed, about a month from
now. If major construction is then allowed to resume, the reactors will have an
expected life span of at least 60 years.
Of course, we need electricity, but we dont need electricity to commit suicide, Ali
said.

Musadaq Malik, a Sharif adviser on energy issues, counters that a country that trusts
its military to possess nuclear weapons can also trust its government to maintain a
Chinese nuclear power plant.
We may look irresponsible, but we are not that irresponsible, Malik said. We have
engineers, we have scientists, we have our security apparatus. ...Like other nations, we
have done all of this before, reasonably well.