A public interest litigation (PIL), signed by 13 experts and two NGOs which are concerned over proliferation of nuclear plants in the country, has been filed before the Supreme Court urging it to stay all the contracts that the Union government and its agencies have signed for setting up the “hazardous” plants without assessing various risks and cost factors involved in them.
A well-researched PIL, filed by Common Cause and Centre for Public Interest Litigation has been supported among others by former power secretary EAS Sarma, former secretary to prime minister KK Venugopal, former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian, former chief election commission chief N Gopalaswami and former head of entomology department of Andhra Pradesh University N Venugopal Rao.
They have sought a direction to declare the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 as “unconstitutional”.
In the case of a nuclear accident, all nuclear operators and nuclear suppliers would be jointly, severally and absolutely liable for civil damages, and their financial liability would be unlimited, it said.
The law suit also seeks cancellation of all the clearances given to the proposed nuclear power plants and stay on all proposed nuclear power plants till requisite safety assessment studies, thorough comparative cost-benefit analysis and meaningful public hearings are carried out by or under the supervision of an independent expert body.
According to counsel for the petitioners, Prashant Bhushan and Pranav Sachdev, the biggest of the proposed nuclear plant is at Jaitapur in Maharashtra where 6 reactors of 1650 MW each are to be imported from Areva Corporation in France, a company that’s been penalised under the French law.
It said while a thermal power plants cost around Rs4.5 crore per MW, nuclear plants cost over Rs10 crore per MW or more.
The PIL also said in a country which is reeling under huge transmission and distribution (T&D) losses and several thermal and hydro plants run at their only 50% efficiency, it would be prudent to reduce the T&D losses increase efficiency.
The PIL may be heard next week.
