Kalam calls for safe use of nuke energy to meet power needs

To cater to the growing energy needs, India must turn to nuclear power, said former president of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.Interacting with students of Cathedral Composite PU College and High School in the city on Friday, he said: “The most important resources for our future would be anything to do with energy. Hence, we should cultivate wind power, solar power, nuclear power and other forms of energy to support our needs which will exponentially expand.”

When a student asked how safe nuclear power plants would be citing the meltdowns and release of radioactivity at Fukushima plant after an earthquake and tsunami-hit Japan in March last year, Kalam said nuclear energy was a clean form of energy.  However, one needed to follow a set of rules and regulations imperative to ensure its safety. India needs energy independence, he said.

When a student drew Kalam’s attention to the recent exodus of people from the Northeast states, he said those people were “just like anyone of us. Society should be more tolerant, he remarked.

“We should celebrate our differences. We need to inculcate tolerance in the behaviour of human beings and, particularly, we should encourage this in young students. We need to be able to include and celebrate the various cultures of this country,” he said.

Individuals should try to be unique since society is good at forcing people to become like everyone else. “You should strive to be unique because the world around you is doing its best to make you ordinary,” he said.