Uttarakhand is a highly seismic zone, falling in zone 4 & 5 categories
After constructing a number of dams and hydro-electricity plants (HEPs) in Uttarakhand that added and aggravated the unprecedented disaster of 2013, now the Government of India is contemplating setting up a nuclear power plant in the state.
As it cannot be built in the hill regions of the state, it would be somewhere in the plains and the most probable site is close to Doon Valley, just outside the state capital that has sounded an alarm bell as scientists and environmentalists are against it.
Anyway, it is the technology that now the West is discarding as France as France’s President François Hollande plans to reduce the reliance on nuclear energy to 50 percent by 2025 from its current level of more than 75 percent – the world’s highest atomic energy dependence rate, so they’re dumping this anti-people technology to us, the lesser mortal, in India too, it contributes to about 3.5 percent of total electricity generation.Â
It should be noted here that this announcement is the realization of the Prime Minister Modi’s ambitious goal of tripling nuclear power over the next decade, to more than 10,000 megawatts (MW) over the next five years.
It must be mentioned that Uttarakhand is a highly seismic zone, falling in zone 4 & 5 categories and nuclear power plants are designed to withstand natural disasters like earthquakes, but as Durgesh Rai of IIT Kanpur says, “Most of our nuclear plants are in weak seismic zones but lie in coastal areas,â€, but as another warns, “as Uttarakhand is a high earthquake, setting up a nuclear plant here will be devastating for future generation.â€
Adds Anil Joshi, a Dehradun-based environmentalist; I don’t think such a step would be advisable. What’s the need for setting up a one here when the state has so much else to worry about?â€
Indeed, when the West and the rest of the world is going solar as in the next year China will become number one in solar electricity generation country, followed by the US, setting up a nuclear power plant in Uttarakhand is indeed anachronistic when the state had plenty of sun to be exploited.