The extraordinary patience that India has shown in the commissioning and execution of the Kudankulam nuclear power project’s first unit in Tamil Nadu has borne fruit; it is said to be functioning satisfactorily enough to be formally commissioned through videoconference. The significance of the project — with potentially six reactors at one site generating six gigawatts of “clean” power — can be gauged from the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. We must now see if the first reactor — equipped with most modern safety features to withstand even a Fukushima-type double whammy of earthquake and tsunami — will live up to its billing.
Judging by the start-stop, problem-ridden run of Unit-1 since October 2013, and Unit-2’s teething troubles, it is not easy to be totally sanguine about the smooth functioning of the reactors. After great effort and sacrifice, including by local residents who were slapped with thousands of sedition cases over their sustained protests, engineers of both the countries must do everything possible to make the project a success.
It may be fashionable nowadays, amid the hunt for green energy, to shun nuclear power. However, it has to be noted that the places where one could set up nuclear plants are required to be in the non-seismic or least-seismic zones. Taking the local population into confidence on all questions, including nuclear accident liability, is the best route forward, but then Kudankulam had become a byword for the opaque ways of the government.
