Goa fidgety after Japan N-leak

PANAJI: A crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in distant Japan has made some people closer home uneasy about Goa, sandwiched between Karnataka’s Kaiga nuclear plant and the proposed plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.

Kaiga is barely 22 km from Goa’s southernmost taluka of Canacona and Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district is 1,725 km from North Goa.

Several local environmentalists and citizens had opposed Kaiga’s construction in the 1980s. One of them, Claude Alvares said on Saturday, ‘‘ The issue of a tsunami triggering a crisis at a nuclear plant is a new development. The only possibility considered when we opposed then was the possible emission of radioactive cloud in nearby areas in case of an accident.’’

Fukushima case brings out a different angle to a tsunami as a primary cause, he said.