While exhibits from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) have been a regular at IIT Bombay’s Techfest, for the first time at this year’s festival, NPCIL addressed the students to dispel myths and fears about nuclear energy. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster last year, NPCIL had considerably increased it awareness activities to fight misconceptions about nuclear power. Speaking on ‘Realisation of Indian dreams through nuclear energy’, NPCIL director-technical S A Bhardwaj said nuclear energy is the safest and most reliable source of energy for India. “It is the most mature technology, affordable and demonstrated to be commercially viable, meets social and environmental goals and has well-defined regulatory practices established on par with the best international standards. Then why not nuclear energy? What’s not clear about nuclear energy?” he asked students. Bhardwaj said there continues to be concerns about nuclear energy and resistance to it as things are not clear. “There are concerns about radiation. At Tarapur, where we have had 41 years of reactor operations, people are not worried. People in new areas (where the nuclear reactors are being set up or proposed like Koodankulam and Jaitapur) are worried due to the gap in understanding radiation. This should be addressed and is being addressed,” he said. He explained to the students that everyone is living in a naturally radioactive world. Citing numbers, Bhardwaj said compared to the average natural radiation background dose of 2,400 microsieverts per year, the radiation dose from the Indian nuclear power plants during 2010 was 0.42 to 39.6 microsieverts to persons near the plant boundaries. “This is insignificant compared to natural background. And this is possible due to layers of security and safety features (at our plants). Nuclear energy is thus the safest (energy source) in India,” he said. Bhardwaj’s talk, part of the lecture series at Techfest, focused on India’s three-stage nuclear programme, the operating reactors and the new projects. “At Koodankulam, we are currently held up due to some doubts and fears in the minds of people and for the Jaitapur project, we are now negotiating with Areva (which is designing the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) that India plans to import for Jaitapur),” he said. From queries regarding how safe India’s nuclear reactors are to withstand earthquakes, to handling of nuclear waste, several students quizzed on how they could be a part of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) or NPCIL and the procedures to visit a nuclear plant site. “This is the third year when we had put up our exhibits at Techfest. However, it is the first time that our official addressed students and it is part of our efforts to create awareness about our projects. This year, we had eight exhibits and an audience of over 50,000, mostly engineering students from various colleges, who were curious to know about our plants and programme,” said Ranjit Kakde, general manager (corporate communications), NPCIL. The three-day festival ended on Sunday.