No cause for worry, assures NPCIL chief

Hyderabad: With the nuclear industry around the world already facing heat from the fallout of the disaster at Fukushima, Japan, Indian authorities have now rushed forward to put nuclear safety in perspective for the domestic audience.

Addressing a media conference over the weekend, chairman & managing director of India's sole nuclear utility, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd's, SK Jain, said the country's atomic power units were completely safe and had all facilities at their command to handle any adverse situation.

He was also confident that there would not be any reversing of the country's nuclear energy programme in the light of negative public perceptions of all that had transpired in Japan.

Jain termed the hydrogen explosion, and a brief exposure of spent fuel of a unit that was already stopped for maintenance as just an incident and not even an accident.
 
''The reactors, the containment of nuclear fuel, have remained intact even in the face of an earthquake of the magnitude of 9 on a Richter scale,'' he said. He denied there was any large scale radiation leakage from the site.

Jain said the situation at the Japanese power plant was now under control, as the cooling of the spent fuel storage area of the stricken fourth unit began from yesterday.

Jain felt that an error of judgement of half a metre (height) had probably led to the Japanese problem, essentially caused by failure of diesel generators as water entered these due to the tsunami.