Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said the Kudankulam Nuclear Power plant, whose commissioning has been stalled due to protests, cannot be allowed to remain ‘idle’ when the nation has sunk an amount of Rs14,000 crore on the project.
Singh said there is a growing view which he also shared that the agitation against the Russian-aided project has been ‘overdone’. Expressing confidence that ultimately good sense would prevail among those concerned over safety issues for operationalising the plant, he said government has gone out of its way to assure as much as it can that the 1000 MW nuclear reactors each that have been put in place in Tirunelveli district are the ‘safest available’ in the world.
Singh on Friday had said that the first unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power project will be operationalised in a ‘couple of weeks’ and that the second unit will be commissioned six months later.
"It is my sincere hope that Tamil Nadu which is short of power supply will recognise that there is a plant of 2000 MW set up at cost to the nation of Rs14,000 crore, we cannot simply let it idle," he said.
Singh said that if the first two units of Kudankulam generate 2000 MW power, nearly 1000 MW would be availed by Tamil Nadu and the rest would be available to other states in the South. The Prime Minister made the remarks when asked about his hopes of operationalising the plant when the ground realities are different.
Singh said: "There are difficulties, there are some people who are worried about the safety of nuclear reactors and we have gone out of our way to assure as much as we can that the nuclear reactors that are being put up at Kudankulam are the safest available in the world."
"I am confident that ultimately good sense will prevail, politics is sometime I think too murky. In the final analysis, I am confident that sense prevails and will prevail in this case," Singh said.
Noting that a group of 15 experts has been appointed to interact with representatives of the Tamil Nadu Government and locals, the Prime Minister said more and more people, including the legislature and himself, are increasingly of the view that this agitation is overdone.
To a question that Tamil Nadu was not getting adequate power, the Prime Minister said Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has written a letter recently asking for some additional allocation of power from the Central Government.
"We are working at it, we recognise the need of Tamil Nadu, we will work with the government of Tamil Nadu to satisfy the legitimate requirements of power, in a manner which is consistent with the overall availability in the country.
Well we are at it and I was told that the Power Ministry has already indicated 100 megawatts straight away," he added.