Anti-Kudankulam activists step up protests after quake alert

Activists protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) have upped the ante after a massive earthquake off Indonesia's western coast triggered tsunami fears in the coastal regions of the country.

Calling it nature's warning against the commissioning of KKNPP, the group that is spearheading the protest demanded the government to immediately halt work at the plant, which is expected to commence production in two months.

"We think that earthquake and tsunami are nature's warning against commissioning the KKNPP. We demand an immediate halt to work in the wake of significant tremors all over Tamil Nadu and the potential danger of tsunami along the coast of the state," the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) said in a statement.

PMANE said the tsunami warning issued by National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) on April 11 has confirmed the extreme risks to which the nuclear reactors located on the east coast of India is prone to the tsunamis that get generated in the Indian Ocean.

"This warning has underlined the immediate necessity to study and prepare scientifically rigorous tsunami preparedness plans based on tsunami hazard studies for these sites. It has revealed how such preparedness plans based on scientific principles simply do not exist for the two reactor sites already in place in this coast."

The protesters, most of them fishermen, have been nervous after last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan which forced 150000 to flee.

The protesters have also expressed concern about pollution of seawater which could harm the fish and affect their livelihood.

Although initially the Tamil Nadu government had stopped the work at the Kundankulam plant, later the Jayalalithaa-led TN cabinet cleared ways for the first stage of the 2×1000 MW nuclear power project.

Joining the ongoing agitation at Idinthakarai, the epicenter of protests, was social activist Swami Agnivesh who sought a high-level enquiry to expose corruption in the energy sector.

"I demand that the government scrap the plant and initiate an alternative source of clean energy. An independent panel, comprising national and international experts of credible records should visit the site and a public hearing should be held," the Press Trust of India quoted him saying on Thursday.

Several religious and political figured are expected to offer their support to the stir.