The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) on Sunday slammed the report of the Government-appointed expert committee on Kudankulam as being extremely flawed, premised on obsolete demographic data and opaque on the risks from sub-volcanic activity near the site or health impact on the local population.
The PMANE also released a letter to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa seeking her intervention in scrapping the project.
In the letter to the Chief Minister–copies of which were circulated to media – PMANE leaders flayed the Expert Group for ignoring valid questions on liability and declining to give specific or scientific information on nuclear waste or the fresh water needs of the KKNPP. The Expert Group had not talked to any section of the public nor tried to allay the fears and concerns of the people.
“Campaign of canards”
The letter also took exception to the Central government's “campaign of canards” about the anti-nuke activists receiving foreign funds, support and guidance to drive a wedge in the movement and sought to reassure the Chief Minister that there was not an iota of truth in these charges.
Addressing the media, PMANE leaders said the Expert Group's report only confirmed the worst fears of the people that the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd had “cut corners, compromised on safety and failed to perform statutory due diligence” in pushing the nuclear energy project.
PMANE will submit its own point-by-point rebuttal of the report to the Governments at the Centre and State in a couple of days, besides tabling it before the people.
M. G. Devasahayam, former bureaucrat and convenor of the PMANE panel, called the Central Expert Group's report extremely flawed on fundamental grounds as it relied on 2001 Census figures instead of the 2011 data and claimed environmental impact assessment and CRZ clearances in 1989 when such norms did not exist.
He also questioned the contention that enough resources would be raised in three to four decades of selling energy at 2 paise per unit to meet the costs of decommissioning the plant – though the resources would add up only to about Rs. 640 crore over this period as against the Rs. 1 lakh crore estimate prepared for decommissioning the Fukushima plant in Japan.
V. Suresh, national secretary, People's Union for Civil Liberties, too flayed the Central Experts Group for submitting a report that not merely contained half-truths, but “appeared to be completely founded on falsehoods”.
V. T. Padmanabhan, scientist, said the official reassurance about adequate freshwater reserves to cool the reactors for a period of ten days if any desalination plant malfunctions was on a shaky base as the downtime to restore these plants using complex Israeli technology could be much longer and failure to cool tonnes of spent fuel could be catastrophic for the entire region.
According to PMANE leaders, the Kudankulam site was prone to small-volume volcanic eruptions and mega-tsunamis arising out of the presence of The East Comorin slump and the Colombo slump (agglomeration of loosely-bound sediments that can trigger tsunamis) in the seabed of the Gulf of Mannar.
Lava rock
They even produced a piece of lava rock collected from Abhishekapati, less than 100 km northwest of Kudankulam, that they claimed established the presence of sub-volcanic intrusions of the very kind that prompted the US government to abandon the Yucca Mountain as a possible waste storage site fearing its structural integrity.
The PMANE panel said: “Under the circumstances, the KKNPP is not merely illegal but patently unsafe and not worthy of the confident statements on safety issued by atomic energy officials and their agents.”
