PM asked to cancel Jaitapur nuclear project – gulfnews.com

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was yesterday urged to cancel the contract with French company Areva to set up nuclear reactors in Jaitpur in Maharashtra.

The National Committee in Solidarity with Jaitapur Struggle said the plan to put up six reactors in Jaitapur “appears seriously flawed” after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

The appeal to the prime minister was signed by political leaders Prakash Karat, A.B. Bardhan, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nama Nageswara Rao, K. Danish Ali, Sitaram Yechury and D. Raja.

“We are deeply concerned that the central government and the Maharashtra government do not seem to have paid due attention to the serious objections regarding the safety of the proposed Areva reactors and its costs raised by experts, MPs, public figures and local people,” it said.

The communication said the project had not been subjected to an independent rigorous scientific techno-economic scrutiny and safety audit.

It said the ‘conditional’ environmental clearance granted by the ministry of environment and forest in November 2010 was based on an unscientific and deeply flawed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report.

The 1,650 MWe European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) of Areva, it said, “is an untested design and has caused serious concerns among the nuclear safety agencies of different countries”.