Chennai, Jan 11 (IANS) Indian authorities are considering various locations to store nuclear waste generated by atomic power plants, a senior official of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) said here Wednesday.
‘We are studying locations for storing nuclear waste generated by atomic energy plants. The waste will be in very small quantities and would be stored underground with no possibility of radiation,’ S.A. Bhardwaj, NPCIL technical director, told mediapersons after a scientific meet on ‘Radiation and Cancer’.
According to him, states like Bihar and Haryana have expressed their willingness to house nuclear power plants.
Stressing that the fast reactors are an integral part of India’s policy to close the nuclear fuel cycle, Bhardwaj said: ‘We have to go for fast reactors as we do not have sufficient uranium. However, other countries are also planning to build fast reactors.’
Bhardwaj also said India was capable of handling nuclear disasters if at all they happen.
‘Nuclear power plant disasters are different from the likes of the Bhopal gas leak. In the case of nuclear power plant disasters, there will be sufficient time available for the people to take safety action. Further, the radiation level threshold stipulated in India for evacuating people is quite low which, in turn, is safe for people,’ he added.
Bhardwaj said the radiation dosage from Indian nuclear plants is far less than the average background natural radiation that people are exposed to daily.
Presenting the study on the health profile of employees of NPCIL, chief medical superintendent S.K.Jain said the employees working in nuclear power stations are not prone to any higher rate of occurrence of disease, particularly ‘cancer’, than the general public.
He said the average natural incident rate of cancer among the general public is 98.5 out of every 100,000 of population as against 54.05/lakh among the NPCIL employees.
Jain said the mortality due to cancer, the average death rate in the general public is 68/lakh as compared to 29.05/lakh among NPCIL employees.
Ruling out any linkage between nuclear power plants and cancer V. Rangarajan, head, Department of Bio-imaging at Tata Memorial Centre said the highest incidence of cancer is in the north-eastern states which do not have any atomic power plant.
He said the incidence of cancer in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore with nuclear power plants near them are similar to other cities that do not have any atomic power plants.
Citing a Canadian study on 17,700 workers of uranium mining, he said the workers are found to be keeping better health than the general public in that country.
