On Board PM's Aircraft, Dec 17: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said the Kudankulam Nuclear Power plant, whose commissioning has been stalled due to protests, cannot be allowed to remain “idle” when the nation has sunk an amount of Rs 14,000 crore on the project.
Dr. Singh said there was a growing view which he also shared that the agitation against the Russian-aided project had been “overdone”.
Expressing confidence that ultimately good sense would prevail among those concerned over safety issues for operationalising the plant, he said government had gone out of its way to assure the people of the safety of the reactors.
Dr. Singh had on Friday said that the first unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power project would be operationalised in a “couple of weeks” and that the second unit six months later.
“It is my sincere hope that Tamil Nadu which is short of power supply will recognise that there is a plant of 2000 MW set up at cost to the nation of Rs 14,000 crore, we cannot simply let it idle,” he said.
Dr. Singh said that if the first two units of Kudankulam generated 2000 MW power, nearly 1000 MW would be availed of by Tamil Nadu and the rest would be available to other states in the South.
The Prime Minister made the remarks when asked about his hopes of operationalising the plant when the ground realities are different.
Dr. Singh said: “There are difficulties, there are some people who are worried about the safety of nuclear reactors and we have gone out of our way to assure as much as we can that the nuclear reactors that are being put up at Kudankulam are the safest available in the world.”
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