Batting for the use of atomic energy, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh today slammed environmentalists opposed to it, saying the ongoing debate over the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant was more political than technical in nature.
Amid concerns over nuclear waste management at the 10,000-Mw plant in Maharashtra, Ramesh said it was not an immediate problem for India.
Taking a dig at those opposing the power plant, he said, “From an environmental point of view, it is really tragic that nuclear energy is red rag to the green bull. All the greens are anti-nuclear...It’s paradoxical actually. All the greens want clean energy to control global warming but when it comes to nuclear...The current debate on Jaitapur is more political than technical.”
He said nuclear energy was necessary to curb greenhouse gases emitted by India. “About 38 per cent of the green house gases by India are produced due to electricity generation,” he said.
Referring to concerns over nuclear waste management, he said “Today, we don’t have a waste management problem. We will have it by the year 2020-2030.” He said it would be “really wrong” to claim that India faced the problem of nuclear waste management today.
“Today, we don’t have waste management. The second stage of the three-stage cycle (of using nuclear fuel) enables us to deal with much of the waste as is being generated today,” he said while participating in a panel discussion on ‘Our nuclear future: perspective and prospects’.
Ramesh said the nuclear waste generated at the 5,000-Mw capacity is not the same at 10,000-Mw generating facilities in countries like the United States.
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“We must have a sense of balance, a sense of proportion, which seems to be missing in so far as the environmental approach to nuclear energy is concerned,” he said.
The Union minister agreed, however, that the issues being raised, particularly in relation to waste management, needed to be addressed in a “much more credible fashion”.