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Koodankulam Calling

With the Supreme court giving its verdict in favour of commissioning the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tirunelveli, nuclear hawks are likely to talk tough in Jaitapur and elsewhere. For the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) that has been spearheading anti-nuclear agitation for so long, it is almost a situation of back to square one. They say ‘it is a delayed and unjust judgement’. But it is a judgement in the armoury of the Centre and Tamil Nadu State Government. And it is binding on the parties that moved the court in the first place through PIL. The judgements says ‘the safety and security requirement have been taken care of and the project would benefit larger public interest’. Anti-nuclear activists have been campaigning for years exposing hollow claims of safety and disposal of nuclear wastes.

Even if nuclear reactors operate normally, their environmental costs are terrible. People living near the reactors are inevitably exposed to radiation leakages: the diabolical elements created in the fission reaction leak out of the reactor into the environment through a number of ways. The consequence: they will continue to suffer from cancer and other deadly diseases and children will continue to be born with mental and physical deformities for thousands of years!

An even more monstrous problem is the problem of waste disposal. Each 1,000 MW nuclear power plant generates 30 tons of radioactive waste annually. This waste contains elements like Plutonium and Technetium, and is intensely radioactive and remains so for more than 2 lakh [two hundred thousand] years ! There is no safe way of storing these deadly wastes; they are generally stored in temporary storage sites near the reactors. Everywhere, the waste is leaking, leaching, seeping  through the soil into aquifers, rivers and seas, to ultimately enter the bodies of plants, fish, animals and humans.

Tragically enough, they are all set to lit the funeral pyre at Koodankulam at a time when environmentalists around the world are talking about the consequences of the Fukushima disaster that occurred two years ago. India has not learnt anything from Fukushima. In truth they don't want to learn because nuclear deal involves hot money.

In India, as in Japan, the lack of governance and independent regulatory oversight was identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General as crippling factors in the nuclear safety regime. The only issue that seems to pre-occupy the governments and parliamentarians in respect of 'Koodan-kulam' is the proposed date of its commissioning, as if this 1000 MW more than any other 1000 MW will bring the country out of the dark ages.

At each and every place in the country where the government is proposing to set up nuclear plants—Koodankulam in south Tamil Nadu, Jaitapur in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, Gorakhpur in Haryana, Chutka in Madhya Pradesh, Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh, and Mithivirdi in Gujarat—people are waging determined struggles. These peoples' struggles are not for getting a better compensation package from the government. The people of these regions are actually fighting, for the people of the entire country. They are demanding that the nuclear plants be scrapped. They realise that if the government of India continues with its diabolical nuclear programme, sooner or later, a major nuclear accident is bound to take place in one of India's nuclear reactors. And if that happens, its costs are going to be huge that it will destroy India.

Meanwhile, around 25 school children submitted a petition to the Tirunelveli district collector to shut down power plant, to save the future generations. But they are not listening. They are now justifying their claims of 'safe and clean energy' by citing the apex court judgements.         [contributed]

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 45, May 19-25, 2013

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