New Delhi: The power that is fed into homes using nuclear energy has its genesis in Jharkhand, from where the raw material, Uranium, to power the reactors is extracted. India has sufficient uranium deposits to build a few hundred nuclear bombs but it does not have the required amount of uranium to fuel its Atomic Power Plants. The largest deposits were found in the 1960s at Jaduguda in Jharkhand and the nuclear lobby in India rushed in to exploit the ore there. Since 1967, the Jaduguda region has been exploited for its uranium and so have its people. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) formed the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd. (UCIL) with a mandate to explore and mine this precious ore. UCIL started the exploitation of man and nature the very next year in 1968. Several years later it has created a tragic legacy which includes loss of health, disease, deaths, ruining of social fabric and professions, environmental destruction and irreparable damage to the ecology. The only ones who have profited from this deprivation are those associated with the Nuclear Club – those who need uranium for dubious power and atomic weapons. For the last several years, the radioactive wastes have been dumped into the rice fields. The government agency mining the uranium makes no attempt to protect the lives of the people and environment of the area. The unsafe mining of uranium has resulted in excessive radiation which has led to genetic mutations and slow deaths. Medical reports reveal that impact of radiation on the health of tribal peoples has already been devastating. Trucks which carry the processed material from the mines are open dumpers with just a piece of plastic thrown over the top – most often, even this is missing. The dumpers spill the material on the roads all the way from the mines to the rail yards. Radiation level meters (Geiger counters) frequently go berserk as the radiation count exceeds the maximum limit which can be displayed on these meters. Scientists designing these counters probably never imagined that any civilian region would possibly have this amount of radiation. School buildings have been made of stone which was extracted during blasting of the mines. Placing the radiation meters on their walls makes the counters beep furiously. Probably military grade instrumentation with higher limits needs to be used in these “civilian” areas.