Kalam said on Sunday the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam is safe and that he is fully satisfied with the safety measures incorporated into the system.
Former president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said on Sunday the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam is safe and that he is fully satisfied with the safety measures incorporated into the system.
“I saw the two great safety systems integrated into the reactor and I am happy with it,” Kalam told reporters after a visit to KNPP on Sunday.
He said there was no need for the public to worry about the safety issues of the reactor. “It is one of the advanced reactors in the country. Fears about tsunami waves causing damage to the nuclear power plant are unfounded. The tsunami waves will subside by the time they reach the reactor building,” he said.
The former president was taken around the plant by project director NK Balaji. He interacted with the engineers and scientists of the KNPP.
Kalam, however, ruled out the possibility of his mediating with the activists of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), who have been staging demonstration seeking the closure of the plant. “But I’ll speak to the general public about the significance of this plant from whichever platforms I can,” he added.
According to him, KNPP would meet a major portion of Tamil Nadu’s energy requirement in 10 years but did not elaborate much.
PMANE leaders had declared that they would not speak with Kalam though they may welcome him as the country’s former president.
Kalam issuing a clean certificate to the nuclear power plant has brought with it another controversy. “He is a missile engineer and not a nuclear scientist. How can he speak about the safety of nuclear reactors and the nature of tsunami waves? He had been asked by former Atomic Energy Commission Dr HN Sethna not to comment on nuclear engineering,” PMANE leader Pushparayan said.
The spat between Kalam and Dr Sethna was a fall out of the revelation made by former DAE chairman Dr PK Iyengar and K Santhanam, nuclear physicist who coordinated the 1998 Pokhran nuclear explosion. Iyengar and Santhanam had said that the 1998 Pokhran explosion did not yield the desired result and India would have to undertake further peaceful nuclear explosions to check the efficacy of its preparedness.
Kalam who was a member of the Pokhran team as scientific advisor to the then prime minister said the explosion was a great success which made Sethna to remind him that he was not a nuclear scientist but a missile engineer.
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