SC:If Safety measures are not met, commissioning of the Kundakulam Plant can be stopped

The Supreme Court on 27 September 2012 directed to the center that if the safety measures are not found satisfactory than it would not hesitate from stopping the commissioning of the Kudankulam project in spite of the huge investments made on its installation.

The bench of Justices K. S. Radhakrishnan and Deepak Misra stated that safety of the people residing around the plant is a serious concern and in case any of the safety measures have not been followed during the execution of the plant.

Earlier the central Government formed a special task force that recommended 17 measures in relation to the safety concerns of the power plant but they have not been taken care of nor fully implemented. The installation of the plant also suffered several changes ever since 1989, when the environment clearance was offered to the plant.

Concerns and Issues related to Kundakulam Nuclear Power Plant

The petition submitted by G Sundarrajan declares that the environment clearances made during the 1989 Environment Impact Assessment was not done because the site for installation was not decided by then. Government even failed to conduct the public hearing, which is a mandatory thing to be done under law. The critical changes done in the plant are as follows:

1. The previous plan was to store the spent fuel in Russia, but now it will be stored within the plant
2. The water for being used in the nuclear plant was to be taken from the local dam, but now the decisions have been made to take the fuel from the sea
3. Then the Ministry of Environment and Forests stated that the sea temperature will suffer a change of 5 degrees but now it has been raised to 7 degrees

Affidavit submitted by The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd submitted an affidavit to the Madras High Court on 18 August 2012 and 22 August 2012 in relation to the safety measures followed by the plant and its abilities to withstand the natural events like earthquake, cyclones and all. The same affidavit was submitted to the Supreme Court on 26 September 2012. The provided affidavit states:

1. The plant has been designed to be safe at times with the washing away of the safety units which may be caused due to floods, Fukushima incident of washing away has been cited for an example.
2. The nuclear plant is a generation 3+ power plant and is designed taking care of the ultra-modern safety measures like auto-prevention against the general causes of failure of the safety system and is reliable and complies to the standards of redundancy available at present
3. The power plant can survive against the natural events such as tsunami, earthquakes of high reactor scale, shock waves, fire, cyclones and others. The main building of the plant is also safe against the air-craft impact. Security arrangements against the terrorists attack and sabotages have also been implemented.
4. The structural design can prevent the release of the radioactive material in the public even in cases of physical attacks
5. The affidavit also cleared that the 17 recommendations of the AERB (Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) will be taken care at times to come. This affidavit also made clear that 7 out of 17 recommendations were compiled but the power plant was safe even without the use of the 17 recommendations made by AERB.