Enhance Nuclear Plant Exclusion Zones instead of shrinking them

Letter by Shri E A S Sarma, Former Secretary to the Government of India to the Minister in charge of Atomic Energy

The government has proposed to reduce the exclusion zones around nuclear power plants. It is wrong for the government to do something that will underestimate the likely adverse impacts of radiological exposure on people near nuclear power plants, undervalue human life and compromise public safety, only to accommodate private interests. The need is to increase the exclusion zones and not shrink them.

12/05/2026

To

Dr. Jitendra Singh
Minister in charge of Atomic Energy

Dear Dr Jitendra Singh,

I have come across a news report that India plans to reduce the size of exclusion zones around nuclear plants from the existing 1 km to less than that, to free up significant amounts of land for reactor expansions, “in a move to attract private investment”. According to the report, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have already approved the proposal to reduce the buffer zone “in principle”.

Evidently, such an extra-ordinary move is triggered by private corporate pressure, as the newly enacted SHANTI Act has opened floodgates to the entry of private, both domestic and foreign, parties for setting up and operating nuclear power plants in India. It is unfortunate that the government should do something that will underestimate the likely adverse impacts of radiological exposure on people near nuclear power plants, undervalue human life and compromise public safety, only to accommodate private interests.

As long as nuclear power development was confined to the public sector, with NPCIL having exclusive responsibility, and NPCIL, as a CPSE had social sensitivity and responsibility, the AERB had notified the following zones from the risk point of view (https://aerb.gov.in/images/PDF/CodesGuides/NuclearFacility/NPPSiting/1.pdf)

 The 1 km threshold for the “exclusion zone” has a scientific basis. It is a “regulatory minimum floor” derived from three converging considerations: (1) dose modelling under Design Basis Accident (DBA) conditions without relying on public counter measures, (2) ensuring normal-operation dose limits are met at the boundary, and (3) security and emergency response practicality.

The “radiological surveillance zone” of 30 km notified by AERB in the case of domestic nuclear plants is far less rigorous compared to the USA where it extends upto 80 km, demonstrating the concern of the US regulator for the likely adverse impact of radiation from nuclear power plants on the health of the people living near them.

Soon after the Fukushima accident, there was a global concern about the need to tighten regulation over nuclear facilities. India should have reviewed its own zoning regulations post-Fukushima and tightened them.

Unfortunately, in our case, the AERB is subject to administrative control of the DAE whose facilities it is expected to regulate. As such, it lacks sufficient authority to exercise rigorous regulatory oversight on nuclear

facilities. The position has since worsened with the newly enacted SHANTI Act that continues to render AERB subordinate to the DAE and diminishes the transparency of the functioning of nuclear facilities.

As early as in 2012, following the Fukushima accident, the Parliamentary Committee concerned with the DAE, made far-reaching suggestions on the ways and means to empower the AERB by enacting a separate legislation to enable the latter to regulate India’s nuclear facilities more stringently. More than a decade has gone by but the Committee’s suggestions are yet to be implemented. Instead of accepting the Parliamentary Committee’s recommendation, under pressure from US nuclear reactor suppliers, India has taken the regressive step to amend the erstwhile Atomic Energy Act and the erstwhile civil nuclear liability law to enact the recently introduced SHANTI Act, which, for the first time, allowed domestic and foreign private companies to set up and operate nuclear power plants in India, more or less fully insulated from liability for damage to human life from accidents attributable to defective reactor design and the use of sub-standard material in the manufacture of reactors. This implies that, even if a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster were to take place in India as a result of an overseas-manufactured nuclear reactor of defective design or a reactor involving the use of substandard material, the liability which may run into lakhs of crores of rupees will still have to be met from the public exchequer, at the cost of the people! In turn, this implies that the Indian taxpayer would subsidise the cost of an accident arising from shortcomings on the part of overseas nuclear reactor suppliers.

Considering that almost all the nuclear power projects proposed to be set up based on reactors supplied by overseas suppliers comprise multiple reactors with cumulative capacities exceeding 6,000 MWe located in one place, even low-intensity radiation near such a plant can be much higher compared to NPCIL’s existing nuclear plants. Therefore, there is a strong case for enhancing the lower threshold for exclusion around the future nuclear power plants, not reduce it. In fact, the population density of our country is such that utmost care is called for in insulating people from health damage on account of both low-intensity radiation from running nuclear power plants and high-intensity exposure from accidents.

Against the above background, I appeal to you to make sure that the government, the DAE and the AERB do not cave in to pressure from private nuclear power plant operators and the government ensures adoption of regulations that safeguard the public interest.

Regards,

Yours sincerely,

E A S Sarma

Former Secretary to the Government of India

Visakhapatnam