Environment NGO Greenpeace has criticised the French President, Francois Hollande for promoting nuclear energy in India while reducing his country’s dependence of atomic power.
Greenpeace campaigner Sophia Majnoni claimed that the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology offered by the French company Areva to India for setting up nuclear power plants at Jaitapur was “risky”.
“It is highly unethical on part of our President to go to a developing country like India and offer this risky technology, with such huge repercussions,” said Majnoni, a Greenpeace campaigner from France.
The NGO said Hollande was elected as President of France on the poll plank of reducing the dependence on nuclear energy from the current 75 per cent to 50 per cent by 2025.
“EPR is an untested technology and over time has only proved to be a technology that countries should not invest it,” Karuna Raina, anti-nuclear campaigner, Greenpeace India, claimed.
During his two-day visit here, Hollande said India and France should unite their efforts in cooperation on civil nuclear and renewable sources of energy and in agriculture on which majority of people of both countries are dependent on.
India is negotiating the techno-commercial agreement with Areva for setting up two 1,650 MW nuclear power reactors at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.
Four more nuclear reactors are expected to be set up at Jaitapur.
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