Nuclear Power Corp to reach out to people, allay fears

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SME Times News Bureau | 10 Jan, 2012
Admitting that no efforts were made to allay fears among people about nuclear power, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) Monday announced it would reach out to people in a big way this year.

Facing stiff resistance from people on the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Maharashtra and the Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu, the NPCIL is planning to start a communication drive in the areas.

"We did not realise that we keep talking about nuclear power plants and other technical things but never tried to allay fears among people about impacts of radiation," said S.A. Bhardwaj, director (technical), NPCIL at a scientific meet here on radiation and cancer.

He said the government did not talk to people about benefits of nuclear power before starting the project and it is necessary to take people along.

"We have to tell them that nuclear power is the only solution to meet the growing power demands of the country. We recently realised that we have been projected as being very secretive at NPCIL," he said.

Bhardwaj said NPCIL did not get a chance to talk to people of Jaitapur and Kudankulam "directly".

"We wish to talk to people directly and are confident of allaying all their fears. We have started campaign in support of nuclear energy on FMs, TV and through other means," he said.

NPCIL is also planning to make public display of radiation figures from nuclear power plants and comparing them with radiation emanating from other things like mobile phones, X-rays and others at various places in the country.

Bhardwaj explained that people are continuously exposed to radiation in one or other form daily.

"We use granite slabs in our kitchen which emit radiation, fruits like banana have potassium 40 which has radiation and many other things but the only thing is that it is within permissible limits," he said.

Radiation is regularly measured all over the country by the Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IERMON) system of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) including in the surrounding areas of nuclear power plants.

These measurements over several years have established that the amount of radiation in the surrounding areas of the nuclear power station is barely measurable even using ultra-sensitive instruments, he said.

K.M. Mohandas from the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) said the routine medical diagnostic procedures such as dental X-ray, chest X-ray and CT scan deliver radiation doses that contain radiation several times higher than those by a nuclear power plant.

Quoting a study which has been conducted by NPCIL for the period 1995 to 2010, he said the employees working in nuclear power stations in the close proximity of radiation are not prone to any higher rate of occurrence of disease, particularly cancer, than the general public.