Ensure public interest and safety while regulating N-power : Hamid Ansari

Mumbai, Aug 26 (ANI): Vice President Mohd Hamid Ansari has on Wednesday called on scientists to exercise utmost caution in the regulation of nuclear power in the ensuring public interest and safety.

Addressing the graduation ceremony of the Baba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Training School in Trombay, "our experience in regulation of a hitherto closed sector thrown open to private corporate and foreign investment has been a mixed one."

Ansari said in various areas such as telecom, petroleum and gas, electricity and infrastructure development, the public perception of regulatory oversight has been dented as a result of allegations of regulatory bias and conflict of interest in corporate conflicts.

" We must exercise utmost caution in the regulation of the nuclear power sector so that the public interest and safety is ensured," Ansari said.

Raising concern over the non-availability of human resource for the research sector, Ansari said : "A time when the government and public sector have been losing human resources to the private sector and are unable to attract the best talent available, what is that sets apart the atomic energy and space establishments."

Ansari appreciated BARC's initiation to train human resource internally.

"The experience of the Department of Atomic Energy seems to confirm the view that within large organizations, there is an intricate synergy between personal fulfilment and individual accomplishment and research-education linkage,"Ansari said

"Internal human resource development and retention is greatly facilitated by this focus on linking day-to-day work with academia and research," he added.

Underlining the importance human resource in the nuclear research, Ansari said human resources occupy a critical role in the nuclear industry, as the life cycle of the nuclear energy sector requires extended time horizon, technological complexity and need for excellence.

"The nuclear human resource dilemmas of the developed countries are of a totally different dimension. They are facing problems in retaining skilled personnel for facilities that are at the end of the life cycle with no new capacity deployment in the near future. They also have to attract young talent in an ageing population if they wish to revive nuclear power as a green energy option in a world facing climate change scenarios,"Ansari said.

Ansari expressed confidence that the training and work would see all researchers emerge as multi-disciplinary specialists, spanning multiple technologies and sciences and represent India on the world stage where new opportunities are emerging in nuclear research. (ANI)