India’s nuclear policy is dictated by reactor lobby from the United States and its allies notwithstanding serious concerns expressed over safety after Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, said trade union leader and anti-nuclear power activist Vivek Monteiro on Tuesday. After a visit to the project site of Kovvada Nuclear Power Park Project at Ranasthalam, about 80 km from here, where Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd will set up a 6x1594 MW plant, he told The Hindu that the Government of India should have a re-look at its nuclear policy and civilian nuclear agreement after the Western countries’ response post-Fukushima.
Mr. Monteiro, a PhD in physics from the State University of New York, said the authorities’ approach make them suspect that they had not learnt any lesson from Fukushima and Chernobyl incidents. Kovvada itself would generate 300 tonnes of spent fuel and three tonnes of plutonium every year.
He said Areva of France, Westinghouse of the US and GE-Hitachi, a joint venture of the US and Japanese manufacturers, had put pressure to sell their reactors respectively to Jaitapur, Mithirvidi and Kovvada nuclear power plants as they had no market in their own country. The three plants will generate 26,000 MW.
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Charging the government with having no ‘back-end’ plan for disposal of spent fuel effluents, he said the US Congress in its report in 2009 on nuclear power plant security and vulnerabilities had stated that spent fuel by nuclear plants would expose to terror attack by aircraft. After Fukushima, Italy, Germany and Switzerland have decided to opt for zero dependence on nuclear power. He said Fukushima and Chernobyl had made large parcels of area unfit for fishing, agriculture and human habitations and asked the government to shelve its plans to generate 20,000-MW nuclear power by 2020.