India to Unveil its Nuclear-Capacity Addition Plan at IAEA Meeting

India will disclose its plans to expand its civilian nuclear power generation programs at next week’s 55th annual International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna.

India’s Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee, who is also India’s Atomic Energy Department Secretary, will lead India’s delegation.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already announced his country’s intention to pursue its atomic program to increase India’s nuclear generation capacity in the next two decades to 63,000 megawatts over the nation’s present electrical power generation level of 4,780 megawatts, The Business Standard reported.
 
Last month Singh stated that he was convinced that nuclear energy "will play an important role in the country's quest for clean and environment-friendly energy."

Not everyone is convinced of the value of nuclear power in India’s future. Director of Center for Environmental Studies, GITAM University, Professor T Shivaji Rao said that nuclear power is not only hazardous but expensive for India, commenting, "Nuclear power, which was considered a safe source of energy during the previous decades by several technologically advanced countries, has been recently proved to be a more uneconomical and hazardous option. Hence countries like Japan and Germany recently decided to close down the existing nuclear power plants in their countries. Since Nuclear Power is inherently unsafe in both conventional and advanced passive safety reactors, the Indian Prime Minister must learn from the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima Nuclear plant accidents and gradually close down the existing plants in India."

By. Charles Kennedy, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com