TIRUNELVELI: Coordinator of the National Alliance of Anti-Nuclear Movements (NAAM), Neeraj Jain, has demanded shutting down of the Koodankulam and other nuclear power plants, besides revocation of the cases against the anti-KKNPP protestors.Neeraj said that the people living around the plant were protesting seeking its closure, but the government, was going ahead with the project. In an attempt to break the protest, hundreds of activists had been arrested and the most outrageous charges, including sedition and waging war against the country, foisted upon them, Neeraj said. The country’s nuclear establishment and leading scientists were spreading the view that the plant was safe and was the solution to the power crisis in Tamil Nadu. This was not true, he said. Neeraj said that nuclear plants were extremely dangerous and nuclear electricity was much more expensive than conventional electricity.He recalled how around 10 lakh people had been dying worldwide till 2004 as a result of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Similarly, the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan would cause lakhs of cancer deaths in the coming decades, he cautioned. “However, the Indian government has refused to learn lessons from the disasters and continues to build nuclear plants,” Neeraj said.He further alleged that the accidents at Narora nuclear plant in 1993, Kaiga in 1994 and the valve leakage at Kalpakkam were kept under wraps and information sought through the Right to Information Act (RTI) about these was denied. Tamil scholar Tho Paramasivam, S Samuel Asir Raj, Associate Professor, Sociology Department, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, were present.
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