Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) Declining to put on hold for now the loading of fuel rods in one of the two reactors of Kundankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court Thursday said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government.

The apex court’s decision came as hundreds of people from Tamil Nadu’s Idinthakarai village, the epicentre of the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), stood in the sea water Thursday to protest moves to load uranium fuel in one of the two reactors.

Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan and Justice Dipak Misra declined to pass any immediate order on a petition seeking to restrain the government from going ahead with the loading of nuclear fuel rods in the reactor of the plant.

The court said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government from doing so.

IT professional P. Sundarrajan moved the apex court Tuesday contending that the government should not go ahead with the loading of the fuel rods till 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee are implemented.

Mentioning the matter before the bench, counsel for the petitioner Prashant Bhushan told the court that the expert committee was set up after Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, to suggest safety steps to ward off any such incident.

Bhushan told the court that out of 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee only six have been put in place and to implement the remaining 11, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) will require six months to two years.

Besides the central government, the petitioner had made the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, NPCIL, the power plant director and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board respondents.

The petitioner had said that the recommendations of the government’s own expert task force on the critical safety features had not been implemented so far.