Absolutely no worry, assures NPC chief

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India’s chairman & managing director, S K Jain, says the country’s atomic power units are completely safe and have every thing at their command to tackle any kind of adverse situation.

Addressing a media conference here yesterday, Jain said there would not be any slowing in the country’s nuclear energy programme in the light of public perceptions of what had happened at the one in Japan.

He termed the hydrogen explosion and a brief exposure of spent fuel storage place of a unit that was already stopped for maintenance at the fourth unit of the nuclear power plant in Japan as just an incident and not even an accident. “The reactors, the containment of nuclear fuel, have remained intact even in the face of an earthquake of the magnitude of 9 on a Richter scale,” he said, while denying any largescale radiation leakage from the site.

According to him, the situation at the Japanese power plant has been completely brought under control, as the cooling of the spent fuel storage area of the stricken fourth unit began from yesterday.

He said an error of judgement of half a metre (height) had probably led to the Japanse problem, essentially caused by failure of diesel generators as water entered these due to the tsunami. “It was only the question of removing the decay heat that was left after successfully shutting the reactor.This is not the time to go into the details of why the plant personnel did not immediately start using sea water to cool the fuel containment. In our country, the plant engineers are always instructed to use seawater in such scenarios, even if that meant shutting the reactor for several months,” he said.

Adding: “As for ourselves, safety is always the top priority and safety review at our nuclear power plants is a continuous process.” The existing plants and those proposed to be built are completely safe even in the case of sabotage, apart from any natural calamity, according to him. Being very conservative on safety, nuclear plants located on the western and eastern sea coasts are built at a height more than what was thought necessary by NPCIL, he said. The ongoing safety review did not mean the units were less safe nor that there would be any slowing in execution of new projects.

He said 50 of the 54 nuclear power reactors in Japan were still working, taking care of the country’s energy needs.