Anti-nuclear Protests - India

India

Following the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, many are questioning the mass roll-out of new plants in India, including the World Bank, the former Indian Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, and the former head of the country's nuclear regulatory body, A. Gopalakrishnan. The massive Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project is the focus of concern — "931 hectares of farmland will be needed to build the reactors, land that is now home to 10,000 people, their mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields" — and it has attracted many protests. Fishermen in the region say their livelihoods will be wiped out.

Environmentalists, local farmers and fishermen have been protesting for months over the planned six-reactor nuclear power complex on the plains of Jaitapur, 420 km south of Mumbai. If built, it would be one of the world's largest nuclear power complexes. Protests have escalated in the wake of Japan's Fukushima I nuclear accidents. During two days of violent rallies in April 2011, a local man was killed and dozens were injured.

As of October 2011, thousands of protesters and villagers living around the Russian-built Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the southern Tamil Nadu province, are blocking highways and staging hunger strikes, preventing further construction work, and demanding its closure as they fear of the disasters like the Environmental impact of nuclear power, Radioactive waste, nuclear accident similar to the releases of radioactivity in March at Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has also been filed against the government’s civil nuclear program at the apex Supreme Court. The PIL specifically asks for the "staying of all proposed nuclear power plants till satisfactory safety measures and cost-benefit analyses are completed by independent agencies".

The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy is an anti-nuclear power group in Tamil Nadu, India. The aim of the group is to close the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant site and to preserve the largely untouched coastal landscape, as well as educate locals about nuclear power. In March 2012, police said they had arrested nearly 200 anti-nuclear activists who were protesting the restart of work at the long-stalled nuclear power plant. Engineers have resumed working on one of two 1,000-megawatt Koodankulam nuclear reactors a day after the local government gave the green light for the resumption of the Russia-backed project.