'Jaitapur nuke plant needed for Maharashtra's growth'

MUMBAI: Batting for the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant, Atomic Energy Commission chief M R Srinivasan has said Maharashtra needs the new generation capacity to meet its industrial and agricultural demands and assured locals that effluents from the plant will not affect the ecology.

"Maharashtra needs new generation capacity to meet its increasing demands from industry, agriculture and domestic sectors," he said delivering the first Homi Sethna Memorial lecture on 'Future of Nuclear Power after Fukushima' here last evening.

Assuring locals that effluents from the plant will not affect mango orchards or the fishing activity nearby, he said, "We have actual experience at Tarapur and Kalpakkam and at neither of these places has there been an adverse impact on marine life.

"Similarly Kakrapar and Kaiga, both in the Western Ghats have shown that the ecology of the area is unaffected. The question of compensation for lands that are acquired is a matter that has to be decided by state government," he said.

"But replacement of Land Acquisition Act of the British period is important, with a more balanced one that takes note of present conditions, if the Centre is serious about India's huge infrastructure projects which requires a lot of power," he said.

"Lots of land has been acquired by the government from poor people at very low compensation and to make matters worse the money is not paid promptly. India's record of resettling project affected people has been pathetic. In some coal mining projects, the same group of people have been uprooted more than once," he said.

In recent times, the value of land is escalating so fast that a fair compensation given a year or two ago appears thoroughly inadequate later. But all these matters can be resolved if our decision making elite put their heads together. We run the risk of being a self cancelling society where we cannot take a decision that will break the stalemate, Srinivasan said.