Nuclear plants in India to get more safety features soon

All nuclear power plants in India may soon get some additional safety features. There will be more provisions to add water to the reactors to deal with over heating of the core, a condition that led to the Fukushima nuclear accident.

While maintaining that India's nuclear power plants are capable of handling Japan's nuclear crisis like scenario , Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited -NPCIL has come out with the additional measures. These measures are being taken on the reports given by the four taskforces after an internal safety assessment of all nuclear reactors. The task forces were appointed by NPCIL following the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Talking to reporters in New Delhi, Chairman and Managing Director of NPCIL, Shreyans Kumar Jain, said the assesment report of the task forces are thoroughly reviewed and discussed by experts. It has also suggested setting up of an advance tsunami alert mechanism at the Tarapur Atomic Power Station which houses two Boiling Water Reactors, similar to the crippled reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, which was affected due to a massive tsunami on 11th of last month.

The recommendations also provides for automatic reactor shutdown on sensing seismic activity and increasing of power source capacity for monitoring and control purposes for longer durations.