Hydropower Projects on the Brahmaputra

The Yarlung Tsangpo
The Yarlung Tsangpo or Brahmaputra as it is known in India, has an immense bearing on the lives of hundreds of millions in the sub-continent.
Originating from a glacier near Mt Kailash, it is one of the longest rivers on the Tibetan plateau. It is considered to be the highest river on earth with an average altitude of 4,000 meters. It runs 2,057 kilometers in Tibet before flowing into India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. One of its interesting characteristics is the sharp U turn (known as the Great Bend) it takes at the proximity of Mt. Namcha Barwa (7,782 meters) near the Indian border.
Like the Nile in Egypt, the Yarlung Tsangpo has fed the Tibetan civilization which flourished along its valleys, particularly in Central Tibet.
The Yarlung Tsangpo enters in India in Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. When it penetrates Assam, it is joined by two other rivers (the Dihang and Lohit).
In Assam, the Brahmaputra has always been considered as the very soul of the State by poets and ordinary folk alike. The valley has fertile farmland, with large areas covered with sal forests, a valuable tree that yields resin. Entering Bangladesh, the river unites with the Ganga and is known as the Padma, before becoming the Meghna-Brahmaputra after merging with the river Meghna. Finally it divides into hundreds of channels to form a vast delta which flows into the Bay of Bengal.

The hydro projects
One needs to understand the rationale of the Chinese government to grasp the importance of mega hydro projects on Tibetan rivers for the Chinese leadership in Beijing.
•    China needs energy. Where does one find the highest hydropower potential in the world? Answer: on the Tibetan plateau.
•    China needs water; China can’t import water, but where are the sources of the main Asian rivers? Answer: in Tibet.
A few years ago, the media reported that China was planning one of the most important components of the ‘western route’ diversion scheme at the Great Bend. This pharaonic project is to be the most mind-blowing part “of the national strategy to divert water from rivers in the south and west to drought-stricken northern areas.”
The projects of damming the Brahmaputra and diverting its waters towards the mainland are often mixed up. Though the Indian Foreign Minister affirmed in Parliament that the Zangmu dam, the first dam of a string of 6 dams being built on the Yarlong Tsangpo “is no cause of concern to India as it is a ‘run of the river’ dam”, the ‘diversion’ scheme is a serious issue, as is the purported 38 GWs power station (nearly twice the size of the Three Gorges Dam) planned at the Great Bend, close to the Indian border. But the diversion scheme and the mega dam are clearly two separate projects.

The mega hydropower plant
Let us first have a look at the mega hydropower plant.
On July 17, 2003 The People's Daily published a small item “China to Conduct Feasibility Study on Hydropower Project in Tibet” It ran thus: “China plans to conduct a feasibility study in October on the construction of a major hydropower project on the Yarlung Zangbo River, in the Tibet Autonomous Region… an expert team [was sent] to the area for preliminary work between late June and early July. The Chinese section of the river boasts a water energy reserve of about 100 gigawatts, or one sixth of the country's total, ranking second behind the Yangtze River. The location for the possible hydropower plant is the U-shaped turn of the river in the southeastern part of Tibet. The river drops by 2,755 meters in the 500 kilometer-long ‘U’ section.”
Though very few people noted it, the cat was out of the bag. Later Chinese maps showing a 38 gigawatts plant appeared on the Internet.

The Diversion Scheme: the Li Ling-Gao Kai Plan
The ‘diversion’ scheme is another story.
Some ten years ago, a Chinese engineer Li Ling and a retired PLA General Gao Kai, seriously worked on the diversion scheme. Li Ling published a book called Tibet's Waters will Save China in which he detailed the diversion scheme, also known as Shuomatan Canal (from Suma Tan in Central Tibet to Tanjing in China).
At that time, 'experts' denounced the plans of Li Ling and Gao Kai; Qin Hui, a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tsinghua University declared: “We have to take the international response into consideration. It is undoubted that the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo River are within India's Assam Province, where it is a lifeline for local agriculture and backbone of the economy, just as it is further downstream in Bangladesh.”
The diversion of the Brahmaputra was again in the news in November 2006 when President Hu Jintao visited India. China had decided to assuage the legitimate worries of the Indian government.
Water Resources Minister Wang Shucheng, a hydraulic engineer himself, affirmed that the proposal was "unnecessary, unfeasible and unscientific. There is no need for such dramatic and unscientific projects."
However in April 2011, the website 2point6billion.com quoted Wang Guangqian, a scholar of the Chinese Academy of Sciences saying: “Chinese experts have raised a new proposal to divert water from the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River to the country’s northwestern province of Xinjiang. The water diversion route in the proposal, named the ‘Grand Western Canal’, is slightly different from the ‘Western Canal’ mentioned in China’s well-known South-North Water Diversion Project.”
Wang explained the Chinese rationale: “Faced with severe challenges brought by reduced water resources and a severe drought that has affected a large portion of the country, China has started to consider diverting water from the Brahmaputra River.”
Prof Wang Guangqian seems to say that China has no choice but to do it. An article by Zhang Ke, a reporter at China Business News gave more information.
Wang Guangqian’ proposal, known as the Major Western Route, has been inspired by the work of Guo Kai: “Everybody gets really excited when they hear about it”.
Today, China has less and less water and is looking at how to get it. Scientists can look to two possible directions, from the sea (Bobai Sea ) or the mountains (Tibetan plateau).
According to Li Ling, the Institute of Advanced Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences is using supercomputers and data modelling to simulate the Major Western Route and evaluate its feasibility. Li admitted that “an initial simulation of the proposal has already been produced in Shenzhen, but limitations in the data used to create it means it cannot be made public.”
This lack of data is probably one of the weaknesses of the project, though Li is convinced that it is doable.

A most seismic area
It is necessary to go back to an event in 1950. In the evening of August 15, a terrible earthquake shook Eastern Tibet. "This was no ordinary earthquake; it felt like the end of the world," wrote Robert Ford, the British Radio operator working in Eastern Tibet. “Mountains and valleys exchanged places in an instant, hundreds of villages were swallowed up, the Brahmaputra River was completely rerouted and for hours afterwards, sky over the south-eastern Tibet glowed with an infernal red light, diffused with the pungent scent of sulphur. “ It is a fact that the course of the Brahmaputra changed during those few hours. In the post-Fukushima scenario, this is a crucial factor.

Other factors
Other factors have to be taken into consideration.
One, hydropower lobbies have a financial interest in ‘concretizing’ the project(s) as soon as possible. Dams, whether in India, Africa or Tibet, mean big business and the large Chinese corporations will continue to lobby hard to get the projects through.
The second vital factor is the cost-benefit perspective. The Chinese leadership is very down-to-earth, rational. A friend who worked on the issue told me: “If the price of transferring water is cheaper than conservation or getting water from the sea, China will go ahead.”
There is no doubt that in the end it will be a political decision, but the fact remains that China today badly needs water:

1. To stop the desertification in Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia
2. To have the Yellow river flowing again
3. To feed its people

If such grandiose and seemingly unrealizable projects are even thought of, it is because the situation is quite desperate and nobody is able to foresee any ‘realizable’ solution.
But before taking a hurried decision, Beijing should look again into the disastrous performance of the Three Gorges Dam.
Another issue is that the two first sections of the 'diversion' scheme (the Eastern and Central parts in the Mainland) are running into serious technical and human difficulties. The project faces several problems: the construction has been seriously delayed (a very unusual phenomenon in China). The costs have overshot the estimates and last, but not the least, waters are reaching their destination polluted.
The problems may be different for the Great Western Diversion (or even for the 'Small' Western Diversion), but the delay and difficulties of the Eastern and Central parts is certainly an issue to be considered by the political 'deciders'.
When it makes its calculations, Beijing will also have to take into account the cost of a serious conflict with India. The price of water may then become exorbitant.

The Solution: A Water Treaty with India
The only solution seems to lie in bringing the matter to the negotiating table. If a river-water Treaty could be signed between India and Pakistan in the early sixties, why can not a similar agreement be made between China, India and Bangladesh, in order to assure a decent life for all in the region?
The Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses adopted by the UN in 1997 (though not yet an international law, because not ratified by enough nations), could serve as a model for bilateral or multilateral treaties/conventions with China.
But is Beijing interested?

The new tributary States

In my last posting, I mentioned about the Chinese inroads in Nepal.
This article of The Asia Sentinel shows that to protect the dual oil and gas pipeline (running more than 800 km in Burma and crossing the entire country),the military regime has already deployed some 6000 soldiers in 33 battalions.
The natural gas will be pumped from the offshore Shwe gas fields while the oil will be offloaded in the port of Arakan to be later pumped to Kunming, in Yunnan province.
Here like in the Kachin State (see my earlier posting in the subject), the Burmese Army will protect the Chinese interests.
Is it different from the situation in PoK?
Indian Defence Minister A K Antony told recently the Lok Sabha: "The Government is aware that China is undertaking infrastructure projects in PoK. We have conveyed our concerns to China about its activities in PoK and asked them to cease such activities."
A few months ago, an Indian Army commander had warned that India not only faced the threat from Chinese troops along the LAC, but also from POK.
Antony admitted: "China has also been carrying out rapid infrastructure development in TAR and in areas along the India-China border. It's carrying out construction of strategic roads, railway lines and airfields close to the LAC, which has improved its military capability." 
Whether it is in Nepal, in Burma or in PoK, it is clear the Middle Kingdom is extending its territory, rapidly taking control over its new tributary States.


China's Energy Grab in Burma    
Asia Sentinel
Nava Thakuria
9 September 2011
No Respite from Suffering for Burmese
Although an ostensibly civilian regime is functioning in Burma and there appear to have been elements of change taking place, with policy splits apparently developing between the top ranks of the civilian government and the hard-line military, there has been little indication yet that the lives of the common Burmese have got any better.
Most of the policy that was formulated by military rulers over the last four decades continues to dominate the government’s agenda in the capital of Naypyidaw, nearly 300 km north of Burma’s old capital city of Rangoon. Foreign direct investment, particularly in the oil and gas sector, is aimed at providing funds for the operation of the regime and the maintenance of a strong military rather than doing anything to improve lives.
A National Human Rights Commission has been established and Aung San Suu Kyi met with government leaders including President Thein Sein in August. The first article in 23 years by the Nobel Peace Prize winner was published in a domestic Burmese publication, which immediately was rapped on the knuckles by the government despite 10 months of negotiations with the government to allow its publication.
However, there is deep skepticism over the human rights commission and whether there is any real chance of reform.
“The international community might have seen an election in Burma last year to pave the way for a democratic regime, but it was simply a farce,” said Dr Tint Shwe, a Burmese political leader living in exile in New Delhi. “The election, in which authorities prevented pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her party National League for Democracy’s participation and the junta-dictated 2008 Burma Constitution can never bring change to Burma.”
Speaking to Asia Sentinel from New Delhi, Tint Shwe argued that all policies related to foreign investment remain the same as those put in place by the former junta, the State Peace and Development Council led by Senior General Than Shwe. The present government has not formulated any policies aimed at reducing poverty and misery because their policy is directed toward such economic activities as the China-sponsored multibillion dollar oil-gas pipeline project, Dr Shwe asserted.
The project, which is expected to be completed by 2013, is designed to pump crude oil and natural gas from the Arakanese coast of Burma to China’s Yunnan Province. The dual oil and gas pipelines, nearly 1,000 km in length -- 800 km inside Burma -- will cross the entire country, passing through more than 20 Burmese townships and many villages. The natural gas is to be pumped from the offshore Shwe gas fields of Arakan (also called Rakhine), whereas the oil will be offloaded from tankers from Middle East and Africa to the port in Arakan and then pumped to a Chinese refinery at Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan.
The rich Shwe gas fields have attracted the attention of oil companies from neighboring countries as well. Taking advantage of the absence of western companies because of international sanctions, Asian corporate giants including Daewoo International (South Korea), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Videsh (India), the Gas Authority of India Limited (India) etc have their own stakes in the Shwe fields.
The project is expected to supply around 12 million metric tons of crude and 12 million cubic meters of gas annually to China. Construction started on Burma’s Maday Island in the Indian Ocean during November 2009 over the objections of various human rights and Burma solidarity groups.
The US$ 1.5 billion project, which is a joint venture of Beijing-owned China National Petroleum Corporation and Burmese regime owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, is expected to produce about US$1 billion in foreign-exchange annually to the Burmese government for the next 30 years.
“But thousands of families have been displaced due to the laying of pipelines for both oil and gas supply,” said Wong Aung, a Burmese human rights activist based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. “The government has already confiscated huge volumes of farm lands in both the Arakan and Shan states and with the Magwe and Mandalay divisions for the project. We have reports from inside Burma that nearly 20,000 people have abandoned their places along the long pipeline route.”
Farmland and fishing grounds are being confiscated because of the project, Wong Aung said. “They are also being discriminated against in the compensation process. Workers are getting very low payment and the women are facing unequal wages and even vulnerability to the growing sex industry around the project.”
Wong Aung, the head of the Shwe Gas Movement, said the regime is keeping its governmental machinery alive through the oil and gas revenues, with most of the funds going to the defense sector, which sucks out more than 40 percent of its national budget. Shockingly only 2 percent of the budget goes to health and education of the desperately poor 50 million Burmese citizens, some 79 percent of whom live without electricity, according to Wong Aung. Thus the vast amounts of energy in the pipeline are being pumped across the entire country and the Burmese see none of it.
As the government is responsible for the pipeline safety and security, the regime has deployed over 6000 soldiers in 33 battalions along the corridor and on offshore construction facilities. The Army earlier launched series of offensives to neutralize ethnic militias in Kachin and Shan states.
The human rights commission has not brought any satisfaction to activists like Wong Aung, who said that ‘widespread land confiscation to make way for the pipeline corridor is leaving farmers jobless and fishing grounds are now off-limits, contributing to rising migration’.
“Local people are able to secure only low-wage, temporary, and unsafe jobs on the project and are not able to complain about working conditions or wages without retribution,” the young activist added.
A recent report titled Sold Out: Launch of China pipeline project unleashes abuse across Burma, which was prepared by Shwe Gas Movement and released in Bangkok on September 6, argues that the influx of male workers into the (pipeline) project area has increased the demand for sex workers. As the demand rises, the incidence of forced sex work and trafficking for sex work may also rise rapidly, stated in the report.
It also added that ‘if used domestically, the natural gas would address the chronic energy shortages and transform Burma’s failing economy’.

About Nuclear Safety

Let us hope that the tragedy in Japan will trigger some  reflection in India as well as in China where Areva is setting up nuclear plants (EPR technology).
At the same time, the 'greens' who are occupying the TV studios to lecture us against the nuclear technology, do not seem to have a balanced opinion. They are led by an one-sided 'anti-nuclear' ideology, which is unable to solve any energy problem. 
A more scientific approach is required and perhaps more sustainable consumption patterns.
And the so-called clean hydropower energy is probably more dangerous than the nuclear.


NPCIL hopes techno-commercial deal with Areva in Mar-April
Kolkata, Mar 13 (PTI)
Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is hopeful of signing a techno-commercial agreement with France''s nuclear group Areva SA this month or in the following one.
"We expect to sign the final agreement on scope of work for Areva for building the two reactors at Jaitapur and cost will be signed within March-April," NPCIL Chairman and Managing Director S K Jain told PTI.
The state-owned nuclear power company expects to begin work on 9,000 MW Jaitapur power plant at Maharashtra shortly after the agreement.
In December last, both NPCIL and Areva had signed two agreements comprising a "general framework" agreement and an "early works" agreement for the construction of two of Areva''s Evolutionary Power Reactors, or EPRs, of 1,650 megawatts each in Maharashtra.
The agreements also covers the supply of nuclear fuel for 25 years at the Jaitapur site, which is expected to eventually have six of the 1,650 MW reactors.
India aims to expand its nuclear power generating capacity to 63,000 MW by 2032 from around 4,000 MW now.
On agitation against setting up of the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur, NPCIL officials termed the "opposition as more of a political rather than opposition from the local people".
"As the ruling Maharashtra government is in favour of the project, opposition are trying to take political mileage by opposing it," they said.
NPCIL officials said the Centre had given its nod for the project earlier, including the environment clearance. PTI BSM RG NIK
 
China May Consider Japan Nuclear Accident in Drafting Future Energy Plans
Bloomberg News
Mars 13, 2011
A blast at a nuclear facility in Japan after a record earthquake may become a factor in China’s drafting of future energy plans, a top planning official said.
China may consider the effects of the nuclear accident as it finalizes its energy plans for the 2011-2015 period, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in Beijing. Radiation at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant exceeded Japanese limits after an explosion yesterday destroyed the wall of the reactor building and injured workers following Japan’s strongest earthquake on record.
“Evaluation of nuclear safety and the monitoring of plants will be definitely strengthened,” Xie said today, while attending the closing of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
China, the world’s biggest polluter, is building more nuclear reactors than any other nation in an effort to cut emissions and protect its environment while trying to maintain economic growth. The country is tripling the number of reactors, building 27 units to add to the 13 that are already operational, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association.
“China will become more cautious while developing nuclear- power plants but is unlikely to alter its long-term nuclear development plans,” Dave Dai, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets Co., said by phone today. “The accident in Japan may trigger increased public concerns over building atomic plants.”

Nuclear Accident
An explosion at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor, which had begun venting radioactive gas after its cooling system failed, injured four workers yesterday. The utility reported no damage to the building housing the reactor. It began flooding the reactor with sea water and boric acid today to prevent a meltdown and eliminate the potential for a catastrophic release of radiation.
China won’t change its plans to develop nuclear power after the Japanese earthquake, Zhang Lijun, vice minister of environmental protection, said yesterday.
Global expansion of nuclear power may draw more scrutiny and skepticism as the world watches Japan struggle to prevent a meltdown at the reactor damaged by the earthquake, said Peter Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
There are 442 reactors worldwide that supply about 15 percent of electricity, the World Nuclear Association said. There are plans to build more than 155 additional reactors, most of them in Asia, and 65 reactors are currently under construction, the association said on its website.

Emission Cuts
China has pledged to cut carbon emissions by switching to clean energy such as nuclear and wind power. It wants at least 15 percent of its energy mix to come from non-fossil fuels by 2020 and is building more atomic plants to help meet that goal.
The government may approve 10 additional nuclear power projects during the 12th five-year plan which covers the period from 2011 through 2015, the China Daily reported Jan. 26, citing Zhang Guobao, former director of the National Energy Administration. China is expected to raise its 2020 target for nuclear power generation to 86 gigawatts, accounting for 5 percent of China’s total power generation, the newspaper reported, without citing anyone.
The country is also studying specific measures to control total energy use and conduct carbon-trading trials during the next five years, Xie, who is also the nation’s top climate negotiator, said today, without elaborating.
Wang Ying. Editors: Allen Wan, John Liu