The Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) has stepped up its plan to reachout to villagers in the vicinity of the upcoming Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, in a bid to remove their misunderstandings and explain to them the safety features of the proposed 2,000-Mw plant.
A similar drive has been launched at the 20 nuclear plants across the country, NPC executive director N Nagaich said on Friday. Apart from meeting villagers individually, the state-run corporation lays emphasis on organising plant visits, holding scientific meetings and interactive sessions.
NPC has identified, trained and deployed over 400 personnel for its public outreach activities. An apex committee at the corporation’s headquarter here, headed by the chairman and managing director, has been formed to closely follow these initiatives. It has dedicated working groups at the headquarters and each of the sites.
Nagaich said the corporation had stepped up its public outreach/awareness programmes — in and around the nuclear power sites and at the national level — by adopting a multi-pronged approach. The highest level of NPC, including the directors, has been participating in the outreach activities, he told Business Standard.
“Our senior management officials undertake visits to the villages around plant sites up to an area of 16 km. They interact with them for developing trust and to find out their concerns so as to resolve them,” he added.
Nagaich informed that a specially-focused outreach programme has been instituted and deployed in areas around Tirunelveli district’s Kudankulam, 25 km northeast of Kanyakumari.
The official further said the NPC had entered into a partnership with professional organisations in its outreach programme. “We have held lectures at 130 schools/colleges covering about 50,000 students and teachers. NPC and its associated agencies have organised about 1,200 student’s visits school to nuclear power stations.” Further, the corporation has roped in Tata Memorial Centre in order to allay apprehensions about radiation and cancer.
Nagaich said the NPC had received a “much-needed boost” after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed that American NGOs were fuelling protests to the project. (Singh had told TV channels that there were NGOs, often funded from the United States and Scandinavian countries that were not appreciative of the ways India was overcoming its development challenges.) Singh’s statement is crucial, especially when several nuclear scientists, including former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, M R Srinivasan, had recently said that NGOs from the US and European countries had huge financial support — and they were allegedly supporting the campaign against India’s nuclear capacity.
NPC chairman and managing director, S K Jain, had recently said that the opposition to nuclear plants was fuelled by a “global anti-nuclear lobby, so-called environment activists and the local politicians”. It is to meet such challenges that 1987-founded NPC has launched the campaign and is spreading awareness about the capabilities, safety and economic performance of the country’s nuclear plants.
