Fukushima effect:Kudankulam N-plant fails to get clearance

In what could be termed as Fukushima impact, an environment ministry committee has refused to grant coastal clearance to four reactors, each of 1,000 MW, of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu off the coast of Bay of Bengal.

Updated on: Apr 28, 2011, 01:01:18 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In what could be termed as Fukushima impact, an environment ministry committee has refused to grant coastal clearance to four reactors, each of 1,000 MW, of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu off the coast of Bay of Bengal.

The first two reactors of the plant are in the final stages of the completion and are expected to be commissioned soon. The ministry has given environment clearance to the four reactors in 2009 and now the clearance was being sought under Coastal Zone Regulation rules of 1991.

At its last meeting, the ministry’s Environment Appraisal Committee (EAC) on coastal zone regulation refused to grant permission to construct four more reactors at the project site on the ground that the project proponents Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has provided misleading information.

The EAC said the maps provided by the corporation of the project site and the data related to safety were old, mostly of 2004. The committee was of the view that in wake of devastating Fukushima nuclear tragedy in Japan there was a need to consider the safety aspects more minutely.

The committee had asked NPCIL clarifications on the points raised at the meeting especially regarding to new safety measures after Fukushima tragedy. The Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday had said that six expert committees were examining safety aspects of all existing nuclear plants in India.

The plant, one of the biggest in India, is being constructed jointly by Indian and Russian governments and NPCIL claims it to be safe from earthquake and tsunami. “It has one of the most advanced safety technologies in the world has been used,” NPCIL told the committee.

Plant notes

The plant, one of the biggest in India, is being constructed jointly by Indian and Russian governments and NPCIL

The ministry had given environment clearance to the four reactors in 2009

The first two reactors of the plant are in the final stages of the completion and are expected to be commissioned soon

The Environment Appraisal Committee on coastal zone regulation has now refused to grant permission to construct four more reactors at the site.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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