The Centre was asked today by the Supreme Court (SC) to spell out its time frame for implementing all the safety measures recommended by the Atomic Energy Regulation Board (AERB) for Kudankulam nuclear power plant.
A Bench of justices K S Radhakrishanan and Dipak Misra asked the Centre and the Nuclear Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPCL) to file affidavit stating as to by when AERB’s 17 recommendations, made after last year’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan, would be put in place.
The Centre contended that it has been following international standard as far as transportation and storage of nuclear waste is concerned and it is completely safe.
Solicitor General Rohinton Nariman informed the court that 97 per cent of the fuel is reprocessed and only 3 percent of it comes out as waste.
The court was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by anti-nuclear activists challenging commissioning of the plant on the ground that all the safety measures have not been put in place.
The petitioner claimed that court should restrain the government from commissioning of the plant as only six out of the 17 AERB recommendations have been put in place and the government is saying that it will take two years to deploy all the safety measures.
The court had yesterday made it clear to the government that all safety measures for handling disaster must be put in place at the Kudankulam power plant before it is operationalised saying that there can be no compromise on it.
It had also asked the government to submit disaster management plan before it and directed the Tamil Nadu government to carry out mock drills covering all the 40 villages situated within 16 Km radius of the plant.
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