Kaiga incident serious, inquiry will reveal answers: Prithviraj Chavan

Taking the Kaiga power plant incident "very seriously", the government today said that an inquiry into the "malevolent act" is already in progress and answers will be found soon.

"There is some incident of a disgruntled employee who tried to put some heavy water into one of the water coolers at Kaiga. People who drank water from that cooler, were exposed to some level of contamination. It is being investigated. It is a malevolent act," minister of state for science and technology Prithviraj Chavan told PTI today.

"It was not a nuclear leakage accident, not even a nuclear incident, and not even question of anything going wrong in the process of the nuclear power plant. It was the initial reaction. I spoke to Dr Kakodkar, there is no need to panic," he added.

Chavan said that even if it was an act of a "disgruntled individual", it has to be seen and an inquiry is already in progress.

"We will find answers soon," he said, adding that "I am told by the people inside that it is not a very serious contamination and the system will be cleared in a couple of days or two. But whatever has happened, has to be taken very seriously. We are of course, worried about the safety of the individuals".
 
Chavan, however, gave an assurance that there won't be any harm to the people who drank water from that particular cooler. "They are being looked after medically," he said. The minister said prima facie it looks like that somebody did it.

"Now who was that person? What happened? How did the person get access, and was it somebody working in the laboratory, are the things being looked at," Chavan said.

  
B Bhattacharjee, member National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) told PTI the "Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has sent a team of specialists to Kaiga to investigate the matter.

"They will identify the person who has done this and will also seek to know whether internal unhappiness was the reason or whether there was some outside pressure on the person to carry out such an act".

He further said "the sample of the water from the cooler has been sent for analysis. The AERB is treating this matter with utmost seriousness. They believe that it is a work of an insider as the chances of an outsider getting access to the place are next to remote".