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This refers to the article “Will nuclear power really help?” (Business Line, March 26). With a few arguments, the author has scaled down the power sector capacity addition requirement for the next five years from 80,000 MW to just 23,000 MW.

The main plank of this drastic pruning is that demand, not contributing directly to economic growth (chiefly ‘domestic’ consumption), be excluded in assessing the requirements.

This raises two basic questions: While delivering the electricity generated from the pruned down capacity, how is the domestic consumer to be shut out so that all the power goes exclusively for productive purposes? And what is to be done with the currently unelectrified households (majority of them rural) now estimated as between 40 and 45 per cent of the total?

Electrical energy shortages are about 9 per cent all-India (peak power shortages are about 15 per cent). The National Electricity Plan (2007-12) has put the capacity addition requirement at 78,557 MW to provide “electricity for all by 2012”.

S. K. N. Nair Trivandrum

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