The R13,000-crore mega Indo-Russian collaborative nuclear project is considered critical for the woefully inadequate electricity supply for Tamil Nadu. With Unit I of the 2,000 mw project 99.2% ready and 94.6% of Unit II ready as of November 2011, the commissioning of the plant was postponed from December 2011 to May 2012 for Unit I and to February 2013 for Unit II, as of January 2012, according to the NPCIL website. However, now that the standoff has stretched way beyond what the government anticipated, the expected date for commencement of operations has been taken off the website. Initiated in 1987 jointly by the then Soviet Union in India, the project was taken out of the deep freeze a decade later and construction finally started about 10 years ago.
But when the plant was nearly ready for commissioning, Fukushima happened in March last year, triggering a wave of panic among locals about the Kudankulam nuclear plant. And when the plant conducted a hot run trial of Unit I in August 2011, it only served to deepen the fears. Since then, the plant has been held ransom to the agitation.
This is not to say there were no protests earlier. ?Since 1988, there have been protests consistently, but most of them were small scale and sporadic. What lacked was a sustained movement and there were certain divisions within the community as well. The media also chose to ignore the voices of these common villagers from the distant south of the country,? says M Pushparayan, convener of the Coastal People’s Federation and a PMANE leader, and also a member of the expert panel set up by the Tamil Nadu government to look into the concerns over the KKNP. In fact in 1989, a mass protest against the plant at nearby Kanyakumari culminated in police action, including firing, in which two people were killed and several others were wounded. Pushparayan adds, ?The 2004 tsunami was a massive trigger that jolted people back to reality and since then the protests have just built on. The agitation really intensified in 2011 after the hot run trial of the plant in August when the sounds and the vibrations of the plant scared the people no end, given that the Fukushima radiation leak was also fresh in the mind. That’s when the real panic set in.? The region itself faced the wrath of the devastating tsunami of December 2004, which further adds to the fears of another such natural calamity jeopardising the plant, and in turn the population of the area.
Today, Fukushima is a buzz word in villages around the plant, with the name being used liberally by anyone and everyone to invoke images of fear and tragedy, and everything anti-nuclear.
Meanwhile, the AIADMK dispensation in Tamil Nadu has taken a somewhat non-committal stand on the issue with the Centre, while taking a somewhat populist stand on the ground, thereby seemingly allowing the protests to go on unabated. In fact, protesters and activists who were earlier ?disappointed with the ambiguous stand of the state government? now seem to be finding favour with Chennai?s behaviour. With no end in sight, the Kudankulam logjam continues, with a settlement not a likely reality anytime soon. Meanwhile, the village folk in the area continue to fight against ?evil nuclear power?, as the NPCIL continues to drive home the message of ?safe, efficient and relatively clean? nuclear energy. And Tamil Nadu waits for the 925 mw of power that the Prime Minister promised the state out of the 2000 mw capacity of the project.
