nuclear-news

India’s nuclear power plans derailed by safety fears

 “What you see in Koodankulam and Jaitapur will be repeated in other nuclear parks earmarked for reactors from US suppliers,” 

India’s nuclear future put on hold, Safety fears derail plan to import reactors., Nature News, 8 Oct 11K. S. Jayaraman An increase in anti-nuclear sentiment after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March has stalled India’s ambitious plan for nuclear expansion.

The plan, pushed forward by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, aims to use reactors imported from the United States, France and Russia to increase the country’s nuclear-power capacity from the present 4,780 megawatts to 60,000 megawatts by 2035, and to provide one-quarter of the country’s energy by 2050. But now there are doubts that the targets will ever be met if safety fears persist…..

In April, violent protests halted construction in Jaitapur in the western state of Maharashtra, where Parisian company Areva is expected to build six 1,650-megawatt European Pressurized Reactors.

In August, West Bengal state refused permission for a proposed 6,000-megawatt ‘nuclear park’ near the town of Haripur, which was slated to host six Russian reactors. The state government said that the area is densely populated, and the hot water discharged from the plants would affect local fishing.

On 19 September, following hunger strikes by activists from the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Technology, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu state asked Prime Minister Singh to halt work at Koodankulam, about 650 kilometres south of Chennai, where Russia’s Atomstroyexport is building two reactors and plans to build four more.

Untried and untested

The agitations have almost stopped the nuclear expansion programme in its tracks. “We have not begun work on a single reactor from a foreign vendor; even the land has not been acquired,” says Swapnesh Malhotra, a spokesman for the Department of Atomic Energy….

Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, a former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and a critic of the import policy, expects the protests to spread. “What you see in Koodankulam and Jaitapur will be repeated in other nuclear parks earmarked for reactors from US suppliers,” he says…

October 7, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | India, politics