Government defends Jaitapur nuclear power project

The government is reported to be firm on setting up the 9900 mega Watt nuclear power project at Jaitapur in Maharashtra despite union environment minister Jairam Ramesh's advice of caution on nuclear power plants.

Both the central and state governments are also in no mood for a rethink on the proposed nuclear power projects in the light of the nuclear catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima plant.

The centre today dished out what it claims to be "facts about the Jaitapur nuclear power project" and the planned safety measures to be taken for Jaitapur.

Jaitapur, according to the centre, was selected by the Site Selection Committee for setting up a nuclear power project, based on the suitability criteria like availability of land vs population density, availability of cooling water source, seismicity, safe-grade elevation at site (flood analysis etc), environment aspects and proper access for transportation of heavy/over-dimensional equipment to plant site and some other considerations laid down in the code of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, in addition to the laid-down criteria, an official release said.

The Jaitapur site is also not an earthquake-prone. As per seismic zoning map of the Government of India, Jaitapur falls within Zone III. The land proposed for Jaitapur nuclear power project has a latitude of 16° 34' 38" N to 16° 36' 29" N and a longitude of 73° 19' 02" E to 73° 20' 48" E.

As per the AERB codal requirement, there should not be any active fault within 5 km radius of the proposed site of an NPP. Based on studies carried out by various government institutes/organisations, there is no active fault line up to 30 km radius of JNPP site.