Kundakulum Nuclear Power Project

The 11-day-old fast by villagers against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project has been called off, representatives of the protesters said after meeting Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa. The breakthrough came after Jayalalithaa gave an assurance to the protesters that the state cabinet would pass a resolution against the project and take up the issue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. She also promised that the state government’s representatives would impress upon the PM to stop work on the project. The protesters have been demanding that the project to install two 1,000MW reactors at Kudankulam be scrapped, despite assurances that the Russian reactors were safe and could safely survive earthquakes and tsunamis. The protests started on September 11 when officials conducted an evacuation drill and announced that one of the reactors would start power generation in December. Earlier on Wednesday, V Narayanasamy, Union minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, briefed Jayalalithaa on his visit to the protest venue at Idinthakarai village in Tirunelveli district, besides conveying the PM’s message to her. “The chief minister conveyed a certain message for the Prime Minister, which I will carry to him,” he said.