-The Hindu   After the Jaitapur nuclear power project in Maharashtra, it is now the turn of the 2,000-MWe Kudankulam atomic plant in Tamil Nadu to run into serious opposition. As protests by local residents and activists intensified, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Monday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to order the halting of the project until concerns and fears about the plant's safety were addressed. Hours later, Dr. Singh called up Ms....

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake epicentred 68km northwest of Gangtok struck at 6.11pm today, killing 14 people in India and four in Nepal and sending people rushing out of buildings from Calcutta to Delhi. Nine died in worst-hit Sikkim, one each in Siliguri, Kalimpong and Jalpaiguri, and two minor children in Bihar, including a boy crushed in a stampede. Several houses collapsed and walls developed cracks in Gangtok, where many tall buildings have...

The government on Wednesday introduced the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill seeking to create two regulatory bodies as part of measures to strengthen safety at the country’s atomic power plants, fulfilling an assurance given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the aftermath of Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March. The government had said on 26 April it would draft a Bill to create an independent and autonomous regulator that...

-Outlook   A farmer sitting on a dharna along with other peasants to protest acquisition of land for the proposed nuclear power plant in the district died today at PGIMS, Rohtak. Ishwar Singh Siwach, a Gorakhpur village farmer, was shifted from the Civil Hospital, Fatehabad, to Rohtak last evening in a serious condition, police said. He died this morning, they said. The 60-year-old farmer was taken ill when he was sitting on the dharna...

-PTI   India should move on to make nuclear energy as safe as possible by taking lessons from the recent Fukushima accident but its imperative to replace the old-era Land Acquisition Act with a more balanced one, to address the country's present huge infrastructure and energy needs, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman M R Srinivasan said here. Stating that the resettlement was equally significant in any infrastructure project, he said India's record of...