With every newspaper, news
telecast and face-book page trying to give their share of opinion about the “Built”
and “Ready to be launched” Koodangulam Nuclear power-plant, I hardly doubt the
depth and common sense in those views. We need it or we don’t need it? Before
me sharing my opinion I would like to talk about a thing related to this issue
that made me write this.
All
people who want the power-plant to be shut down ask this question. Is 14000 Cr
INR (supposed to have been spent on the power-plant so far) worth more than the lives
of people? Do we really need something that has a potential danger of
swallowing thousands of lives in it?
I would ask them back. If people
who are smoking are asked to quit smoking citing reasons that they induce
cancerous cells in the body of other non-smokers (passive smoking), will they
be able to stop. Or if someone who has got a house near a highway wants the Govt.
to close the road because there are “chances” of vehicles running into their
houses, will that be right?
If everybody who has got a motored
vehicle is asked to check the emissions and abandon their vehicles if they don’t
meet high emission standards how many will turn up at a nearby center to test
their vehicle. Not even to save this world for their future generation. Can we
all turn off our mobile phones and their towers because the radiations from
them have nearly made “Sparrows Extinct?”
Nobody can deny the intensity of
the hazard these things can cause to us. Even if one of these can cost “1” life,
you can’t say it is in any way less significant than the thousand lives you are
talking about.
BUT, if
they can’t do all this it does not mean we can have the nuclear plant. If at
all the power-plant gets damaged by a natural or man-made disaster, to be frank
I won’t be able to even imagine the day when everybody in Tamilnadu is asked to
evacuate their homes. I can’t imagine a day when my homeland becomes infertile
and incapable of nurturing the millions of scholars, leaders and more than all the
human beings which it has been producing all these days.
It has become a question of Luxury
Versus Survival. But that luxury is close to become a need for survival. What
we need to understand now is to bring a change in this life style driven by
technology and luxury. We are in one way molding a world which is turning
incapable of supporting life. Almost 70% water below and above the ground can’t
be consumed without a purification process. Once we had to search dust and
smoke in air and now we are searching for air amongst dust and smoke. At least 30%
of land which was once cultivatable has turned impotent. I fear if nuclear
energy will worsen this condition if not managed properly. There will be a day when we are in a position
to choose between two things in life that are very vital to our mere existence.
The horizon of that day isn’t so far.
The worst thing in life is being
killed when one is asleep having the best of his dreams, not able to fight for
ones life. I’m not sure if we can make this world live forever. But definitely
we can make this world wake up and fight for its life. To have no opinion is “just
like being dead”. Let us be alive. Have our opinions and act like human beings!
