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Pak's Chashma reactor: a disaster waiting to happen

Following the confirmation by China of an accident at the Qinshan nuclear reactor last year, Pakistani scientists are demanding that their government allow an independent assessment of Chashma, a copy of the Chinese reactor.

The state-run Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission has been tight-lipped about the accident at Chashma's prototype and seems to be going ahead with the commissioning of the 300 mega watt Chashma power plant under construction on the left bank of the Indus river in Mianwali district, 170 kilometres from Islamabad.

''The Qinshan accident highlights the risks that the PAEC is willing to run,'' observes Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist at Princeton University on email from the United States.

Work on the country's biggest nuclear power plant commenced in 1992 after Pakistan and China signed an agreement in 1989. Chashma, its critics say, has inherent design problems like its prototype which has had a history of problems and began operations two years behind schedule in 1991 instead of 1989.

Chashma will be Pakistan's second nuclear power plant; the first is in Karachi. Chashma takes its cooling waters from the Chashma-Jhelum link canal and discharges it into the Indus river.

Mian fears that some of Pakistan's biggest cities would be at risk in case of an accident. ''A major accident could release radioactivity that would contaminate some of the most heavily populated and farmed areas of Pakistan.''

UNI

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