JOIN USAs prolonged negotiations opened, the silver lining was it came a day after former President A P J Abdul Kalam’s report on the KNPP’s safety, which seems to have taken away much of the sting from the two-month long people’s stir.
While the Experts panel constituted by the Department of Atomic Energy is led by Dr A E Muthunayagam, an environmental scientist and Vice-Chancellor, Nurul Islam University, Nagercoil, Pushparayan, a representative of the ‘People’s Struggle Committee’ against KNPP was on the six-member panel nominated by Tamil Nadu Government.
“The first meeting went off well,” sources close to DAE told Deccan Herald after the meeting. The interaction lasted about an hour at Tirunelveli District Collector Dr R Selvaraj’s office. The protestors’ handed over a memorandum raising over 30 queries.
Struggle Committee’s convenor S P Udhayakumar said they have asked for various reports, including the Environment Impact Assessment, safety analysis and performance of ‘VVer type reactors’ imported from Russia.
While the Kalam report emphasises that it “is the Central Government’s responsibility to give proper information and correct, appropriate replies” to all queries raised by the local people, he nonetheless added that some of their apprehensions “are exaggerated”.
“But with fear in people’s hearts, we can neither take forward the developments in science nor a development model for the people based on science,” he cautioned.
The Kalam-Ponraj report, the Tamil copy of which has been accessed by Deccan Herald, has also sought to drive home the fact that “history is not created by nay-Sayers”.
Tuning himself to the sensitivities of a Tamil-speaking audience, Kalam says in his report that if the “great Chola Kings’ like Karikala Cholan or Raja Raja Cholan had feared the possibility of earthquakes destroying their objectifications, then neither the ‘Grand Anaicut over the Cauvery river nor the Big Temple in Thanjavur would have been built.”
Further, “the Nobel Prize winning scientist Marie Curie sacrificed her life that thousands of cancer patients today positively benefit from her discovery of X-rays and radioactivity,” Kalam argued in his research report reviewing all the safety aspects of KNPP.
Similarly if Homi Bhabha, father of India’s peaceful nuclear power programme had been beset by a “can’t do attitude”, then India would not be producing 4,700 MW of nuclear energy safely over the last 40 years,” the report said