NEW DELHI: Responding to a series of questions in the Lok
Sabha on Wednesday, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union
Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh said that India’s Nuclear Plants are
absolutely safe and it is the responsibility of all of us, particularly the
Members of the House across the Party lines, to undertake a mass awareness
campaign to allay apprehensions in public about the alleged hazardous effects
from nuclear installations, because that slows down our endeavour to expand the
nuclear programme across the country.
The issue came up in the Lok Sabha when the DMK
raised doubts about the storage of spent-fuel from the Nuclear Power Reactor in
Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. Dr Jitendra Singh disclosed that in some of the
Western countries like France, the Nuclear Plants are coming up even in residential
areas because there are absolutely fool-proof safeguards in place and in India
also our safeguard mechanism is equally or even more reliable.
However, in India, he said, we still need to increase
awareness in public because many a times, the plans to set up new nuclear
plants have met with resistance in different plants of the country including
Rajasthan and Meghalaya.
He said, the pro-active outreach of the Modi
Government over the last five years has helped to extend our nuclear programme
to different parts of the country as far as Haryana in North India.
