People's Democracy

Jaitapur Project is Untenable

The National Committee in Solidarity with Jaitapur Struggle met in New Delhi on July 18. It has issued the following statement on July 19, 2012.

THE Fukushima disaster has raised several fundamental issues in regard to the Jaitapur project. The location of six reactors in Jaitapur raises the risk of an accident substantially. Also, it is not clear how the issues of spent fuel storage are being addressed in Jaitapur considering the kind of risks that are now clear after Fukushima.  The committee noted that there is not one plant of this design that has yet been commissioned in the world, with plants in  Okilkuoto and Flamanville running into serious problems, both in their construction and regulatory issues.

The reactors being purchased from Areva company in France are of untested technology and are exorbitantly expensive. So far, the actual price and details of the agreement between Areva and the NPCIL have not been made public. The cost per unit of electricity of such a plant will be 3-4 times that of equivalent coal-fired plants.

The committee also noted that the time-bound conditions imposed on NPCIL in the Environmental Clearance granted to the project in November 2010 are already being flouted.

The meeting decided to address a letter to the prime minister immediately raising these concerns. The committee will also write to the minister of environment and forests about the non compliance with environmental clearance preconditions.

It has been decided that these issues will be jointly raised in parliament by MPs belonging to different political parties. For this purpose the committee will prepare a scientific, technical and economic backgrounder which will explain why the project is untenable and must be reviewed.

A national seminar on issues of safety, environmental safety and techno economic viability relating to the Jaitapur project will also be organised by the committee.

The meeting was attended by Prakash Karat, Communist Party of India (Marxist), A B Bardhan and D Raja, Communist Party of India, Ramvilas Paswan and Abdul Khaliq, Lok Janshakti Party, Dr Venugopal Reddy, Telugu Desam Party, Danish Ali, Janata Dal (Secular), Vivek Monterio, Maharashtra, CITU, Prabir Purkayastha, Delhi Science Forum and others.