Nuclear plants are safe: AEC chief

Location: India

MANGALORE: Fatalities from nuclear power plant related mishaps across the world are far less when compared to other power generation sources, according to Srikumar Banerjee, chairman, Atomic Energy Commission on Saturday.

Delivering the convocation address at the ninth annual convocation of National Institute of Technology - Karnataka at Surathkal near here he said, "Out of the three known such incidents- Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima - the casualty due to nuclear plant malfunction is 50-60 in Chernobyl and zero in the other two incidents. While Fukushima incident is no doubt disturbing, the mishaps at nuclear power plants worldwide are few and far between. Globally, we have clocked 14,000 reactor years for nuclear plants and 350 reactor years in India, and we have just above three incidents to show far."

Admitting that fears of people on long shelf life of radioactive isotopes, some of which are active for as long as 10,000 years, Srikumar said the challenge for the future engineers was to reduce it to manageable period. "It is up to budding engineers to find methods to handle nuclear waste," he said adding reactors now are far safer than they were in the early and mid 1960s.

Exhorting the students to strive for inclusive growth of the nation, he said the challenge for future generation was to influence more lives around them rather their own. "Careers no doubt are important. But the aim should be to shun careers that are driven by fashion and peer pressure and be more influenced by individual passion to achieve more in life. Such thinking can change the future course of individual actions and result in greater good," he added.

Rohit Sarkar, a BTech student of metallurgical and materials engineering, who bagged three gold medals told STOI that he was vastly influenced by Srikumar's extempore speech. Now a corrosion and inspection engineer with Reliance Industries Ltd in Gujarat, Rohit said he saw himself as a materials researcher in future pursuing a doctoral degree in an American or European varsity, where cutting edge research in being carried out in the field.

Rashma RSV, who scored a perfect 10 in her cumulative grade point average (CGPA) in the MTech programme was elated and attributed her success to her parents and teachers at NITK. An alumnus of TKM College of Engineering, Rashma had a CGPA of 8.35 in her BTech programme there. While Sandeep Sancheti, in-charge director, NITK presented degree certificates to over 700 UG and PG students, Srikumar Banerjee gave away the gold medals and cash prizes to students.

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