The Centre on Wednesday maintained in the Supreme Court that for establishment of a desalination plant for Units 1 and 2 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, no fresh environmental clearance was required. Additional Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran made this submission before a Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra, hearing the Kudankulam case. Appearing for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the ASG said: “However, in order to place the correct factual position on record, the MoEF will appropriately amend the environmental clearance granted on May 9, 1989 to include desalination plant as a project component. This will not preclude MoEF from considering the issue of desalination plant from the CRZ point of view.” Safeguards put in place He said on April 19, 1989 the then Prime Minister had approved an exemption of the 500-metre norm from the high tide line for the Kudankulam project subject to the MoEF prescribing and ensuring sufficient safeguards for preserving the ecology of the beach. These safeguards had been put in place. He argued that insofar as establishment of desalination plant [for desalination of seawater being used in the plant] no fresh environment clearance was required as the said activity would not come within any one of the 29 specified activities in the 1994 environmental notification. In view of the fact that the desalination plant was a permissible activity within the CRZ area, MoEF would again take into account the establishment of desalination plant from the CRZ point of view and ensure that it would continue to function on further satisfaction of the MoEF. If the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd applied for fresh clearance, it would be considered by the MoEF and orders passed within 15 days. NPCIL affidavit To a question from Justice Radhakrishnan whether the desalinated water used as a coolant would be discharged once again into the sea, the ASG said, “Yes.” When the judge wanted to know whether such discharge would pose danger to marine life, the ASG said it would not affect marine life. In a fresh affidavit, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd made it clear that no danger would be caused by spent fuel after being discharged from the nuclear reactor. It was used fuel after the desired energy had been extracted. The spent fuel, after being discharged, was reused to produce electricity through recycling technology. “These discharged materials include uranium and plutonium, which constitute about 96 per cent and 1 per cent of the spent fuel respectively. The remaining 3 per cent cannot be recycled.” It said the core focus of the fuel recycle management in India revolved around the reprocessing and waste management to reclaim fertile and fissile elements for use as fuel, removal of minor actinides, long lived fission products and noble metals from spent fuel, and for reducing radio toxicity of the waste for final disposal. “Reprocessing of spent fuel is the key to our country’s three stage nuclear power programme.”