'Nuclear power plants more advantageous'

By our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, MARCH 31. Nuclear plants are more advantageous than other power generating units and it will be better to move away from thermal units, Dr. V. Venkat Raj, Director, HS & E Group, Baba Atomic Research Centre, said here yesterday.

Speaking to The Hindu after addressing a seminar on `Natural Background Radiation' organised by the Department of Physics of the Bharathiar University, he stressed the need to augment power consumption. The annual per capita consumption in the country was only 400 units compared to 10,000 units in the U.S. The population explosion in India would necessitate a large addition of power plants in the coming years. The installed capacity of the plants was now approximately 90,000 MW and estimates showed that an addition of at least 1,27 lakh MW by the end of the 11th Plan was required.

Major resources such as water, coal and atomic energy needed to be tapped. ``Nuclear power plants are more advantageous because they are environmentally clean,'' he said. These plants could also ensure long-term availability even after the coal resources were exhausted.

Multiple provisions were available for safe operation of the nuclear plants. Technologies had been developed for handling radioactive rays safely. Radioactive release in the environment was kept much below the permissible limits specified by international bodies such as the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP).

This helped in generating the baseline data on the background radiation. Independent bodies like universities and other research institutions participated in the measuring of background radiation.

Coal power plants released a lot of carbon-di-oxide resulting in global warming and considerable quantity of ash which also triggered radioactivity.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : Be alert in enrolment, Jain tells Bar Council
Next     : 5 surrender in Urapakkam murder case