Farmers in Fatehabad are aware that the West Bengal government has refused permission to a proposed 6000 MW facility near the town of Haripur that intended to host six Russian reactors.
India has drawn up a plan to reach a nuclear power capacity of 63,000 MW in 2032 under the influence of nuclear technology companies.
Claims of the Department of Atomic Energy are not credible. As per DAE's plans, India should have had a nuclear power capacity of 8,000 MW by 1980, but its actual installed capacity was 540 MW. It set a target of 43,500 MW for 2000. But the installed capacity in that year was only 2,720 MW. The current installed capacity of nuclear power is just 2.32 per cent at 4,780 MW. The actual production requires rigorous examination.
Meanwhile, governments of Russia and India signed a protocol for financing the Kundankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu in the teeth of bitter opposition of villagers against the project.
While environmental and health concerns of the present and future generations due to adverse effects of nuclear radiation merit attention, the security concerns that emerge from nuclear reactors also deserve consideration since nuclear installation have become the preferred targets during military conflict and, over the past three decades, have been repeatedly attacked during military air strikes, occupations, invasions and campaigns.
In September 1980, Iran bombed the Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex in Iraq. In June 1981, an Israeli air strike completely destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear research facility. Between 1984 and 1987, Iraq bombed Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant six times. In Iraq in 1991, the U.S. bombed three nuclear reactors and an enrichment pilot facility. In 1991, Iraq launched Scud missiles at Israel's Dimona nuclear power plant. In September 2007, Israel bombed a Syrian reactor under construction.
Observations of G K Pillai, the then secretary in the ministry of home affairs, before the parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, environment and forests in 2010 illustrate how conditions in which the operator of a nuclear power plant, who could be made liable for nuclear damage in armed conflict, hostilities, civil war, insurrection or an act of terrorism, have wide meanings but they have not been defined in the liability act.
These concerns underline that India's nuclear installations are vulnerable to such assaults as well.
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