Tamil Nadu chief minister has ur­ged India's prime minister to halt construction of reactors

[bananas]

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/op-ed/perils-promoting-nuclear-power-368

Perils of promoting nuclear power
By Praful Bidwai Sep 21 2011

In an unusual move, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has ur­ged prime minister Manmohan Singh to halt construction of two nuclear reactors at Koodamkulam in Tir­unelveli district, where more than 100 local residents have been on hunger-strike against the project since September 11, supported by tens of thousands. Only a few days ago, Jayalalithaa had dismissed their apprehensions about lack of reactor safety as unwarranted. E­v­idently, determined popular op­position to the project has i­m­­pelled her to acknowledge t­he “agonising” state of affairs a­nd the people’s “natural” conc­e­rn “for the safety of their families and for themselves” after the “Fukushima disaster”.

The Koodamkulam project bristles with problems. Some of them are generic to all nuclear reactors irrespective of origin, design or configuration of fuel and coolant. All existing reactors are vulnerable to a catast­rophic accident such as a Fuk­ushima or Chernobyl-type mel­tdown. Other problems are specific to these reactors of Russian design, and the way they were granted environmental clearance by the Indian government.

A recent study http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/rosatom_report prepa­red for Russian president Dmitry Medvedev by Russian state agencies concerned with nucl­ear safety in the wake of Fuk­ushima reveals that Russian reactors are completely un­der-pr­epared for both natural and man-made disasters ranging fr­om floods to fires to earthqu­akes or plain negligence.

The report comes from an amalgam of sources such as the ministry of natural resources, Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight, as well as Ro­satom, the nuclear operator ag­ency. According to chief engineer Ole Reistad of the Norwegian Institute for Energy Technology: “The report reveals deficiencies which have never before been mentioned publicly, nor reported internationally.”

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[kristopher]

1. There is some incredible content in Your OP

I'm looking at it in more detail now. In the meantime, here is coverage focused on the breadth of the protests.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x311589

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/anti-nuclear-plant-protesters-in-tamil-nadu-stall-pms-n-power-dream/1/152074.html