Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is back in the news after a brief hiatus for wrong reasons. The ruling DMK Government in Tamil Nadu has expressed its apprehension and fear over the move of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), the apex body controlling the nuclear power reactor in the country, to set up storage facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel from the Nuclear Power Plants at Kudankulam in the project site itself. Spent Nuclear Fuel is dangerous, radio active and with potential to cause long term damage to vast regions and the population in the eventuality of a mishap.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the DMK’s parliamentary party leader T R Balu has said that the move to set up storage facility for spent fuel from Units 1 to 4 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was against the Supreme Court guidelines and order in this regard and wanted the Union Government to find out a site far away from the reactor site or from populated areas.
He quoted the Supreme Court ruling in a case which stated that storing of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plant sites will in the long run pose a dangerous long term health and environmental risk.
“NPCIL and the Union of India are bound to look at the possibilities of potentially harmful events and the consequences in future. The NPCIL does not seem to have a long term plan other than stating and hoping that in the near future it would establish a Deep Geological Repository. The Atomic Energy Act envisages present and future safety of our NPPs and the lives and environment around,” the apex court had said in its verdict in the G Sunderrajan v Union of India in the 2013 case.
The DMK leader wants the Government of India to send back the Spent Nuclear Fuel from Kudankulam to Russia to keep the same in their storage facility. He further demanded that the Government of India set up Deep Geological Repository (DGR) where SNFs from nuclear reactors in Tamil Nadu could be safely stored.
The KNPP shot into fame because of the agitation staged by the anti-nuclear energy bodies like Peoples’ Movement Against Nuclear Energy demanding the scrapping of the nuclear power reactors at Kudankulam.
R S Sundar, leading nuclear reactor engineer, who headed the KNPP and guided the commissioning of the two plants each of 1000 MW told The Pioneer that there was nothing to worry about the safety and safeguards being followed in preserving the spent fuel. “We are following the guidelines issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in the preservation of spent fuel which has the contents of Plutonium and Uranium in them. The quantity of spent fuel is miniscule and is safely stored in pond-in-pond facilities strictly observing the safety norms. Our track record itself will prove that we have expertise in storing spent fuel generated in the nuclear reactors from the early 1970s,” said Sundar..