Wake up call after the initial bluster

After an initial boasting of safety of country's nuclear reactors, the Indian government seems to be finally waking up the challenges, following China suspending approval for new nuclear reactors and Germany shutting down its seven nuclear installations after Japan's nuclear crises.

Following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's orders, the Nuclear Power Corporation ( NPC,) custodian of atomic power plants, and the Strategic Forces Command ( SFC) holding nuclear buttons have been asked to conduct a safety audit of country's nuclear power plants as well as strategic projects.

It now appears that Japan's nuclear plants were well designed to withstand a quake, even up to the magnitude of 10 Richter scale.

But the designers had not taken into account the disaster that can be accrued through Tsunami. A team of Indian scientists is soon leaving Tokyo to learn lessons from the tragedy.

Experts here believe that even after Tsunami had hit the Indian shores on December 2004, government had undertaken little safety measures to secure nuclear plants. Taking the Japanese tragedy now seriously, different task forces have been assigned to look into reactor technologies and simulate natural disasters to assess if the reactor employing various technologies can survive.

Earlier, few days ago top nuclear scientists, Atomic Energy Commission ( AEC) chairperson Srikumar Banerjee and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairperson S S Bajaj briefed the PM on the Japanese nuclear crises.

Though, officials have been assuring that there was no threat to India from radiation, due to large distance as well as winds travelling eastwards, officials maintain there was no complacency.

" Lessons learnt from Japan's nuclear crises would definitely be incorporated in safety programmes as well as in building new reactors," a top official told Tehelka. " We would carry out a comprehensive reassessment of safety," he said.

Officials here, however, believe that except Narora Atomic Power Plant in Aligarh district of UP (zone 4), none other was in high seismic zones. The upcoming plant at Jaitaur in Maharashtra would be in zone 3.