NPCIL’s four N-plants hits environment road block
The environment and forests ministry rejected the intial applications for statutory environmental clearances submitted by four nuclear power plants proposed by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. This will afftect the plants NPCIL was planning to execute at Fatehabad in Haryana (2,800 Mw), Mandla in Madhya Pradesh (1,400 Mw), Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh (6,000 Mw) and Bhavnagar in Gujarat (6,000 Mw) in three years once construction got underway.
The statutory expert appraisal committee of the ministry has sent back the applications for all four projects, pointing out that they lacked documentation on several counts. The applications were filed to secure what is referred to as ‘terms of reference’ for conducting an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study. The environment ministry’s statutory expert appraisal committee has explained that in each of the four cases of rejection of initial clearance to nuclear plants, even simple statutory forms were not completed properly and information on land-use was missing.
This is the first stage of environmental clearance in which the project developer submits preliminary information and the ministry, based on the information and type of project, provides a list of issues the developer should address in the EIA report. It is then studied along with the report on the public hearing by the ministry to clear or reject proposals. Committee sources said the documents sent for the clearance were so shoddily prepared that it was impossible to pass what should have been an easy first step towards clearances.
An official said NPCIL had been asked to re-submit the documents with supportive paperwork to get requisite TORs for environment impact studies. Ministry officials pointed out that as long as NPCIL submitted the requisite documents, this would be just a temporary holdup as the real point of evaluation arises only after EIA and the public hearing reports are submitted. The possibility that the nuclear power plants might face opposition became clear with ‘NIMBY’ (not in my backyard syndrome) kicking in when officials went for soil testing.
The Times of India
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