Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday complained to the Centre about a BT-maize trial by a multinational company at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) campus in Samastipur district without obtaining permission of the state government. In a letter to Union Environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh, Kumar said Monsanto India Ltd laid trial of BT-maize at IARI campus in Pusa on February 21 before receiving a go ahead letter...

Calling for an immediate halt to the Jaitapur nuclear power project in Maharashtra, the Communist Party of India(Marxist) on Tuesday said Environment clearance should be withdrawn and the entire issue re-examined in the backdrop of the developments in tsunami-hit Japan. In a statement, the Polit Bureau said a party delegation which recently visited the project area confirmed that locals were totally opposed to the location of the plant and to forcible...

Fukushima has become part of the local lexicon at Jaitapur. As news of the apocalypse-like situation in Japan reaches the far corners of villages in and around the area, residents have increased their agitation against the proposed 9,900 mw nuclear power plant. Jaitapur area falls in the seismic zone 3 category, and data from the Geological Survey of India shows that between 1985 and 2005, there were 92 earthquakes. The biggest earthquake...

The tsunami-triggered nuclear crisis in Japan will not slow down India's nuclear power plans. The Government on Tuesday made it clear that there would be no rethink on the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Maharashtra. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh who has been criticised by civil society groups, for clearing the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power project in the eco-sensitive Western Ghats, said his ministry would put in additional safeguards as part...

The amounts of various radioactive releases into the Environment are unknown, as are the winds and other factors that determine how radioactivity will disperse. The different radioactive materials reported at the nuclear accidents in Japan range from relatively benign to extremely worrisome. The central problem in assessing the degree of danger is that the amounts of various radioactive releases into the Environment are now unknown, as are the winds and other...