Is the Jaitapur nuclear site prone to earthquake?
13 Mar, 2013Following an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by Dr BG Waghdhare, some pages of a report by the central government's Site Selection Committee on the assessment of sites for locating nuclear plants have been disclosed. The report was hitherto kept confidential and the disclosure indicates that the assurance made by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) of not having any earthquake activity around the proposed nuclear power plant site within a radius of 39km is not factually correct.
The report states that there have been 93 medium to high level tremors on the Richter scale at the Jaitapur site in the past two decades. The report states that a fault line lies at a distance of 10km and follows the Vagothan river for some distance. There are other fault lines at a distance of 15km, 16km and 24km. Along the Panvel flexure, earthquakes corresponding to Richter magnitude 3 to 5.7 have been reported signifying that the area is earthquake prone.
Activists have been campaigning against the setting up of the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur and have questioned why the whole report has not been made public.