CHENNAI: The four-member experts committee formed by the Tamil Nadu government held its first meeting on Friday and called on Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa at the Secretariat ahead of their visit to Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant and to meet the protestors on Saturday.Prof S Iniyan, convenor of the committee, after holding discussions with the CM, told journalists that the CM had requested them to submit the report at the earliest and that they would do it.Asked whether the panel would allay the fears of the people around Koodankulam about the nuclear plant, Iniyan said: “It is not out duty. We will elicit the views of the people and that is all. Probably, we will be holding a meet at the Tirunelveli collectorate on Sunday to hear the views of the people.”M R Srinivasan, former chief of Atomic Energy Commission, said the panel would enquire whether the agitators would have more questions and if they had gone through all the safety reports about the nuclear plant. After returning to Chennai, the committee would meet again and after discussions, submit its report to the government.Asked about the demand of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy for dropping him from the panel, he said the query should be posed to the one who had made the demand. Questioned where the nuclear waste was going to be disposed of, Srinivasan said, “We are not going to ask those questions. No nuclear waste will be placed in Koodankulam per se. The nuclear fuel after use in the reactor will be kept in the spent fuel bay and thereafter taken to a separate plant to be built somewhere else where the reprocessing will be done. Its at that plant that we’ll be making facilities for storing the waste.”On the demand of the protestors that the panel should be expanded with more members, Srinivasan replied in the negative. When a scribe asked about the objection raised by the protesters for including him in the panel, he shot back: “The government has asked me to be part of the panel and I have acceded.”In the view of the fact that he was a pro-nuclear person, Srinivasan said, “The activists are against the Koodankulam plant and so they are agitating against it. I’m not only an activist for nuclear energy, I’m an activist for the energy independence of this country. I’ve been working in the field of energy for the past 55 years. So, what some group of people think is a matter for their own personal satisfaction.”Responding to another query, he said, “Please understand that the activists are not only asking for giving up of Koodankulam alone. Their name is People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy. So they have to stop 435 nuclear power stations. So, I think they have a big job ahead of them.”
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