Nuclear disarmament activists and environmentalists on Friday expressed “solidarity” with the campaign against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) and anti-nuclear campaigns in other countries, including Britain.
They also criticised the British Government for “exporting” civil nuclear technology to India.
Speakers at a meeting organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and South Asia Solidarity Group here said there were ``lessons’’ to be learnt from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
"If the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima are not learned, then governments are inviting further disasters. Protests against nuclear power in the UK , India , Japan and Germany – and many other countries – show the scale of global public opinion against this dangerous and expensive form of energy” said Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, said she was “deeply worried about the situation in Kudankulam – both in terms of the nuclear plant and the treatment of local opponents”.
Amrit Wilson of South Asia Solidarity Group, said nuclear energy was ``on the run in Europe with multinationals like GEC increasingly reluctant to invest in it’’.
"Unfortunately as part of the fall out of the US- India Nuclear Deal of 2008, these companies have been running to India with their sub-standard and dangerous reactors. That is what has happened in Jaitapur and Kudankulam and elsewhere. We stand in solidarity with the protesters there. The companies involved are all powerful global companies and so international solidarity is crucial,” she said.
An anti-nuclear activist from Japan, Satsuki, said he was ``irradiated after the explosions at Fukushima’’.
"I am not fighting for my own life. It is the children and the future and the future children who will be killed. I am fighting for them. You too are fighting for them in Kudankulam," he said.
