10.08.2013. MINDLESS RUSH TOWARDS NUCLEAR ENERGY India.Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project is supposed to start with the operations by the end of this month,August 2013. “Radiation does cause cancer and my textbook says so.” So says Varshini, a fifth standard student of a high school in Pannakudi. “Media was not there when we were protesting earlier. People like you and TV channels were missing.” Varshini,10 “It is the way of governments. Even if the Kudankulam project blows up in our face they will build another plant somewhere else and tell the people nuclear power is safe.It’s not easy to fool us anymore. People are clued in and better informed after Fukushima.” ..."Can you imagine what would happen here and in all the surrounding villages if there was a leak in the Kudankulam reactor? All that strontium and radioactive iodine will cause cancer and kill us. This is a death zone.” Pushpa,33. When KKNPP announced that two more reactors would be built and held its public hearing in July 2007, the sentiment had turned completely against the project. Around 5,000 people had turned up for the hearing, requiring the Tirunelveli district collector to throw a massive police cordon around the town. And so the struggle promises to continue even though a couple of hundred people have been thrown in jail and sedition cases filed against PMANE leaders and some village folk. The representatives of Peoples Movement Against Nuclear Energy have been attacked inside Tirunelveli Collecotrate compound on their way to attend talks with the Central Government Expert Panel. The women who tried to offer shield to the PMANE representatives have been beaten up. The central panel and central government has also refused to meet the movements expert panel and have an open discussion. Congress has been staging various protests demanding for the opening of the Koodankulam Plant. Meanwhile the protests by the locals in and around Koodankulam and in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu have not subsided at all. 2013. Back to square one.. Rumours on radiation leak from the nuclear plant.Many had left their villages in available trucks and vehicles to distant towns..“There is no radiation leak whatsoever", says KNPP site director R.S.Sundar...However - “We cannot say technically everything is alright"... "None of our questions have been answered properly, to our conviction. We have not been part of any safety drill or preparedness before a Nuclear Power Plant of this magnitude goes critical. We have not been to a Public hearing that gives Environmental clearance to a Project that will certainly have an impact. So we continue as before with the Porattam for life and safety. Because nothing has changed for us except the big news that the Plant will be operational soon. The other day all of us mimed death on the roads and pavements of our village through a Death Struggle. The little ones with their eyes wide open lay in the laps of their mothers or grandmothers hugging the Earth. It was a new experience to lie as if dead because for us the opening of the Nuclear Power Plant is like issuing a Death Warrant. The menfolk have decided to boycott fishing in protect to this national negligence to our right to live. Please do not think we have accepted the decision and succumbed. We will continue raising our voices and asking crucial questions. We do not believe that this Nuclear Power Plant will bring power and prosperity to this region or our nation. We think of the people in Mithirvidi, Kovavada and other parts of India whose struggle against Nuclear Power Parks have only just begun."
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 16:49:31 +0000
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