Kudankulam plant gets Jaya go-ahead

The agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KNPP) fizzled out as the Tamil Nadu government gave a green signal for the commissioning of the first unit of the 2X1,000 MW power plant.

“Immediate steps will be taken for the speedy commissioning of the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam,” chief minister Jayalalithaa said in a statement on Monday.

Kasinath Balaji, project director, KNPP, told DNA that he received the ‘all-clear’ signal from the state administration on Monday evening. “We are busy mobilising our manpower. By tomorrow, we will move into the plant and resume  work for the early commissioning of the plant,” said Balaji. A senior official of the department of atomic energy said the plant would be commissioned in three months.

Even as the cabinet was meeting at Fort Saint George in Chennai, a posse of policemen took into preventive custody nine volunteers of the Peoples Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) from Kudankulam, 650km from the state capital.

The PMANE had launched an agitation against the plant after the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd completed 99 per cent of the work. The site was under the siege of the PMANE volunteers and they did not allow the engineers to enter the plant site. This delayed the October 2011 commissioning of the plant.

Tamil Nadu is under the grip of a severe power crisis with a peak hour deficit of 4,000 MW. The government has declared a power holiday for industrial units. Other than Chennai, all districts undergo load-shedding ranging from six to eight hours a day. The capital city itself goes without power for two hours daily. Though the general perception was that the Jayalalithaa regime would get cracking once the local body elections in the state were over.
 

Officials in the state administration had told DNA that Jayalalithaa would address the Kudankulam issue only after the bypoll since Kudankulam was close to Shankarankoil. The bypoll was held on Sunday.    

“The agitation has come to an end for all practical purposes. Local residents lost interest in the agitation because of the severe power shortage and load-shedding. Now what remains to be seen is when the PMANE leaders would call off the agitation,” said a senior intelligence official who had told DNA that the state administration would launch a crack-down on the agitators after the by poll.   

The Tamil Nadu government also announced the launching of Rs500 crore development work in Kudankulam as part of the Provision of Urban Facilities in Rural Areas (PURA) as suggested by former President APJ Abdul Kalam, who had inspected the Kudankulam plant and the safety system.