Major ports in India will have radioactive scanners

The government will install scanners at all major ports to check radioactive emissions.

Its counsel Atul Nanda told the Delhi high court on Wednesday that the process had already begun and the installation would be completed by March 2011.

He was responding to a PIL demanding installation of gamma radiation scanners in all scrap markets of the capital following the Mayapuri incident. “We have already floated tenders for installing scanners at major ports,” Nanda said.

Assuring the court that the government had learnt its lesson from the Mayapuri radiation exposure in Delhi sometime ago, he told a bench of chief justice Dipak Misra and justice Manmohan, “Twenty customs officials working at various ports in the country have been sent to the US for training in scanning radioactive material.”
Nanda said scanners would be also installed at the entry and exit points of all scrap markets in the country.

The PIL was filed by lawyer Pritika Kumar, who sought a direction from the court to seal the Mayapuri market, where exposure to Cobalt-60 had claimed a life in April, until the area was decontaminated.