GOA AN ATOMIC SANDWICH?

Paul Fernandes, TNN | Mar 13, 2011, 06.47am IST
PANAJI: A crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in distant Japan has made some citizens closer home uneasy about Goa's sandwiched position between the Kaiga nuclear plant in Karnataka and the proposed plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.

While Kaiga is barely 22km from Goa's southernmost taluka of Canacona, Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district is 1,725km from North Goa.

Several local environmentalists and citizens had opposed Kaiga's construction in the eighties. One such voice, Mapusa-based environmentalist Claude Alvares said on Saturday, "The issue of a tsunami triggering a crisis at a nuclear plant is a new development. The only possibility considered during our opposition then was the possible emission of radioactive cloud in nearby areas in case of an accident." The Fukushima case brings a different angle to a tsunami as a primary cause, he said.

Pointing to a late-80s study that drew up a detailed list of areas that would have to be evacuated in case of an accident at Kaiga, Alvares said, "A tsunami is now one more cause that makes nuclear reactors suspect."

The study, by professor of environmental engineering at the Andhra University, Shivaji Rao, submitted to then chief minister Pratapsingh Rane, had estimated that evacuation of an area 2 to 5km around the reactor must be completed within six hours; within 12 hours for an area 5 to 25km away, within 24 hours for an area 25 to 75km away and within 48 hours for distances beyond 75km, as per the British accident scenario, based on a wind speed of 5 m/sec, rainfall of one millimeter per hour and neutral stability conditions.

As far as Goa is concerned, areas up to Quepem and Chauri fall within 77km of Kaiga; while Panaji, Ponda and Bicholim are within 115km of the nuclear plant, Rao had stated.

"The Fukushima incident is a serious warning for an environmentally and socially fragile state like Goa," says social activist Kumar Kalanand Mani. "The state could become an atomic sandwich between Kaiga and Jaitapur as environmental destruction does not know state boundaries."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Goa-in-Kaiga-line-of-fire-Greens/articleshow/7690367.cms