Marking three years of the Fukushima disaster, AAP leader and Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan raised the pitch against the government’s attempt to bypass supplier liability provisions in their current negotiations with the Russians on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. “The cost of the Fukushima disaster has been conservatively estimated at $250 billion. The cap being placed by the Indian government on the nuclear power suppliers (in case of an accident) is `1,500 crore. It’s not even one is to 10,000 — if a nuclear disaster were to take place,” said Mr Bhushan, speaking on the need of stringent safety and unlimited nuclear liability at a press meet organised by Greenpeace. “Not only have the Russians been exempted from this minuscule liability but they are demanding they be exempted from all liability for the Kudankulam reactors 1,2, 3 and 4,” said Mr Bhushan. Bhushan also questioned the quality of the material being supplied by the Russian company whose “chief executive officer was arrested and charged for supplying substandard nuclear equipment around the world”. “The government is sacrificing the lives of human beings and also destroying the environment, since following an accident the entire area will be rendered inhospitable,” Mr Bhushan added. Bhushan also questioned the exorbitant cost of generating nuclear energy. It costs `10 crore-`20 crore to generate one megawatt of installed capacity of nuclear energy. Solar and wind are much cheaper forms of energy,” he claimed. During the last three years, more than 1.6 lakh people have been evacuated from Fukushima and 1,600 deaths have been reported due to evacuation stress with over $250 billion having been spent on clean-up and compensation, but the nuclear plant still remains out of control with regular reports of radioactive leaks. G. Sundarrajan, an anti-nuclear activist from Chennai, pointed out that “a lawsuit has been filed against General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi in Japan to hold them accountable. for the accident.” He believes the lawsuit would help bring about a paradigm shift in the way liability legislation were framed around the world. Satyajit Chavan, an activist from Maharashtra, believes making nuclear suppliers pay for their mistakes would increase “accountability and transparency”.