nuclear-news

Police shoot dead an anti nuclear fisherman in Southern India

Steel-helmeted officers ringed one of two 1000-megawatt nuclear reactors in Tamil Nadu state’s Koodankulam region as hundreds of activists tried to lay a siege of the Russia-backed project, television footage showed.

The protests then spread and a 48-year-old fisherman was killed when police opened fire at activists staging another rally in the nearby Tuticorin district, according to a report by the Press Trust of India.

“A number of people including police personnel have received injuries in the clashes,” another officer said while TV footage showed anti-riot personnel chase some of the activists, including women, into the nearby sea.

Monday’s violence comes six months after a lull in protests at the plant, which campaigners say could endanger the lives of locals in the case of a nuclear disaster.

The Press Trust of India said the new protests were in opposition to the loading of enriched uranium in the plant’s reactor…..

Since Fukushima, Indian activists have also campaigned to stop work scheduled to start in 2013 at Jaitapur in western Maharashtara state which would be one of the world’s biggest nuclear facilities.

Nuclear energy has been a priority for India since 2008 when then-US president George W. Bush signed into law a deal with New Delhi that ended a three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with the country.

Since then, France, Russia and private US and Japanese firms have been locked in fierce competition to sell new reactors to India.

September 12, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, India