From Tarapur to Jaitapur: People's Yatra against nuclear plants

After the Fukushima incident in Japan, the anti nuclear movement has geared up in India too. Members of civil society, activists, educationists and journalists have come together to voice their opinion against the nuclear plants in India.

A national yatra has been decided from 23 to 25 April, from Tarapur to Jaitapur. A National Committee has been formed to lead this YATRA, comprising of: Radha Bhatt, Delhi (Convenor), Prof. Banwarilal Sharma, Allahabad, Vandana Shiva, Delhi, Praful Bidwai, Delhi, Bhai Vaidya, Pune and N. D. Patil, Mumbai

The accident at Fukushima has forced many countries to rethink their nuclear programs. However, the government of India is hell-bent on pursuing its nuclear power expansion program, including setting up a string of nuclear plants all along India's coast. The biggest of these is coming up in the earthquake-prone region of Jaitapur, in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. India's scientists are making the hilarious claim that India's safety standards are better than Japan's and that there is no cause to fear.

India's reactors are considered to be the most inefficient and dangerous in the world. And now we are importing reactors from the notorious French corporation Areva for the Jaitapur nuclear plant. These reactors are so dangerous that even pro-nuclear countries like the USA and UK have refused to give design clearance to this reactor. If there is a major accident at Jaitapur, the entire Ratnagiri district will have to be evacuated, permanently, and entire Western Maharashtra, including Pune and Mumbai would be radioactively contaminated! For tens of thousands of years.

This people’s initiative demands the government of India to:

1. Scrap the Jaitapur nuclear power project! Scrap all new nuclear
2. power plants!!
3. End the reign of terror in Jaitapur area!
4. Invest massively in energy saving and development of renewable
   technologies!

The yatra will begin tomorrow from Tarapur and will cover Mangaon ,Hiplun and Ratnagiri. This will conclude on 25th. Prof. Anil Sadgopal (Bhopal), Dr. S. P. Udaykumar (Nagercoil), Prof. Haragopal (Hyderabad), Soumya Dutta (Delhi), Rajiv Lochan Shah (Nainital), Shamsher Singh Bisht (Uttarakhand), Father Thomas Kocherry (Trivandrum), Mathani Saldhana (Goa), Dunu Roy (Delhi), Satinath Sarangi (Bhopal), Nityanand Jayaraman (Chennai), Prof. Trilochan Shastri (Bangalore) and many others will be attending the yatra.

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