by TAHA SIDDIQUE
Port Grand food court, Karachi PHOTO/Port Grand
Pakistan has agreed to the construction of two nuclear reactors in Karachi, a coastal city in a tsunami-prone zone. After the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, scientists and civil society activists are asking why
Pakistan’s largest city and financial hub has given China a green light to build two nuclear power stations on a beach about 15 miles from downtown, raising public alarm over both the location – the coastline is vulnerable to tsunamis – and the fact that the nuclear reactors are new and untested.
Karachi approved the plan in late June when the city’s environmental agency deemed, “after careful review,” that the project was safe. Yet the impact assessment on the reactor site, at a popular beach known as Paradise Point, remains secret.
Now environmentalists, nuclear experts and civil society activists are shouting with unusual gusto that the reactors, due to be completed by the China National Nuclear Cooperation, a state-owned company, within five years, represent a wholly unacceptable risk and fall far short of international safety standards.
“We have become the guinea pigs in this nuclear experiment,” says Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist and leader of the civic opposition. “Sensible people would not even buy a used car without driving it…and no airline would consider buying a new jet-liner without extensive testing. Nuclear reactors have systems far more intricate than those inside the most complex passenger aircraft.”
Christian Science Monitor for more
(Thanks to reader)