Nuclear power is hazardous: Shivaji Rao

Rajahmundry (AP) Aug 24: Terming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that India has to depend on nuclear power for national development as "misleading", Director of Center for Environemntal Studies, GITAM University said that nuclear power is not only hazardous but expensive for India.

At the conclusion of the diamond jubilee celebrations of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics at Kolkata on Sunday Manmohan Singh had expressed his views on nuclear power.

Expressing a contrary view, Prof T Shivaji Rao said, "Nuclear power, which was considered a safe source of energy during the previous decades by several technologically advanced countries, has been recently proved to be a more uneconomical and hazardous option. Hence countries like Japan and Germany recently decided to close down the existing nuclear power plants in their countries."

"Since Nuclear Power is inherently unsafe in both conventional and advanced passive safety reactors, the Indian Prime Minister must learn from the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima Nuclear plant accidents and gradually close down the existing plants in India," he said.

"The Environmental Impact Assessment and the risk analysis due to nuclear accident scenarios clearly show that the nuclear option is not only disastrous but also highly expensive under Indian conditions," he added.

PTI