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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Jayalalithaa gives green signal to Koodankulam plant-Vidya Padmanabhan & Amritha Venketakrishnan

Jayalalithaa gives green signal to Koodankulam plant-Vidya Padmanabhan & Amritha Venketakrishnan

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published Published on Mar 20, 2012   modified Modified on Mar 20, 2012

Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, who had recommended the suspension of operations at the Koodankulam nuclear power plant until people’s concerns had been allayed, said on Monday that work on the plant should resume immediately.

The state cabinet based its decision on a report submitted last month by an expert committee that gave the project the all-clear, she said.

“As per the state cabinet consensus, I (order) that the process for opening the Koodankulam nuclear plant must commence immediately,” Jayalalithaa said in a Tamil press release. “I hope everybody will cooperate with the state’s decision to open the plant.”

The People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which has been leading a campaign against the plant, criticized the decision.

“We think that this is unfortunate that the Tamil Nadu government has changed its stance following pressure from the central government,” said S.P. Udayakumar, PMANE coordinator.

Jayalalithaa said her government will set aside Rs.500 crore to establish boat repair and cold storage facilities for fishermen in the area, and build houses and roads for the local community.

Her go-ahead for the plant came a day after a by-election for an assembly seat at Sankarankovil in south-west Tamil Nadu. Her All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party campaigned vigorously for the election, though it has a majority in the House.

The two 1,000 megawatts (MW) reactors of the Koodankulam plant in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district will go some way towards improving the power situation in the state, which is reeling from a power shortage.

The Indo-Russian nuclear plant has been a site of protests from the community residing around it since its initiation in 1988. The protests intensified after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March last year, when a tsunami damaged a nuclear power plant and caused dangerous radiation leaks.

The agitation reached fever pitch by September, ahead of the scheduled commissioning of the first reactor in December.

In response, Jayalalithaa wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to intervene. Singh, however, asked Jayalalithaa to support the project saying withdrawing it would “impact the state’s development and industrialization plans”.

Installed power generation capacity in Tamil Nadu is 10,237 MW a day, with an average availability of 8,000 MW, state finance minister O. Panneerselvam said in his budget speech in August. But the demand, he said, ranges from 10,500 MW to 11,500 MW.

Jayalalithaa wrote to the Prime Minister earlier this month asking him to intervene and ensure that 1,000 MW of power transmission lines are released by the central load dispatching authorities to help Tamil Nadu receive the 1,750 MW of power contracted from other states. She also complained that of the 1,000 MW additional power for the year requested by her in June, only 100 MW had been allotted by the Centre.

Tamil Nadu will get 925 MW of power out of the 2,000 MW that will be generated once both the reactors at Koodankulam are commissioned.

In quick succession last month, expert committees constituted by the central and state governments pronounced the plant safe and fit to be commissioned.

Jayalalithaa said her cabinet was reassured by the committees that an earthquake or tsunami was not likely to occur in the region where the power plant is located, and that the plant is sufficiently equipped to be safe in any circumstance.

PMANE disagrees with that conclusion. “There are serious unresolved issues in the Koodankulam plant,” Udayakumar said. “They haven’t conducted disaster training around the plant or investigated its likely impact on the oceanography and geology. The people here are agitated. My colleagues and I are on an indefinite hunger strike since this afternoon.”

He added in an email statement that some 10 protesters were arrested on Monday. Mint could not independently confirm this.

J.K. Sinha, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority, insisted on the country’s ability to handle a nuclear emergency.

The protesters “were just trying to create a political issue out of it,” he said. “It is absolutely safe. We have just conducted mock drills in all the other nuclear plants. All the elements are in place and the preparedness (to face an emergency) is there. Our capability is such that our team was sent to Fukushima (to help with the rescue). We are in fact training doctors in large scale to handle (nuclear emergencies) in all the plants.”

India has 20 nuclear plants with an installed capacity of 4,760 MW and plans to increase this capacity to 20,000 MW by 2020 and 50,000 MW by 2030. But safety concerns have stalled many projects in the recent past.

A proposed 9,990 MW nuclear plant in Jaitapur, Maharashtra saw widespread protests from neighbouring communities against the setting up of six French reactors.

In West Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee last August scrapped a proposed nuclear plant in Haripur as a result of a local agitation.

Anupama Chandrasekaran contributed to this story.

Live Mint, 20 March, 2012, http://www.livemint.com/2012/03/19223923/Jayalalithaa-gives-green-signa.html?atype=tp


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