The IRE, which comes under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), refutes all such claims. “We are not producing any radioactive material,” says a senior IRE official on condition of anonymity. “None of our activities is increasing radiation. We are merely collecting the beach sand and separating the minerals, including monazite.”

Adds S. K. Malhotra, who heads DAE’s Public Awareness Department: “Even if we stop the operations, the sea will continue to deposit the monazite-rich sand. In fact, the IRE is “doing the village a favour by removing monazite from the sand” which is causing the high background radiation, he said.

The problem really began six years ago, when people from Periyavilai and five others villages insisted that IRE use manpower instead of machines for mining. Today, the company employs nearly 2,000 workers from six villages, including Periyavilai, paying the Workers’ Society, which in turn distributes daily wages to the workers. At least 600 villagers from Periyavilai work at the IRE plant.

These people also allege that sometimes they are forced to dig as deep as two metres to retrieve the mineral-rich sand, a claim denied by the senior IRE official, who says the workers only “scrape” the top layer to a depth of “merely 15 cms”. While admitting that there has been a high incidence of cancer in Periyavilai as well as the neighbouring Chinnavilai, the official felt that it had nothing to do with the mining operations. In fact, the company gives the village Rs 5 lakh every year under a medical scheme. “This is out of social obligation rather than as an apology for our operations,” said the official.

... contd.