Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Jayalalithaa to dedicate Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant today

Chennai, Aug 10: Nearly three decades after the first contract was inked between India and Russia — a period that saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resultant change in world order, and as many as 10 governments at the Centre.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa will jointly dedicate Unit 1 of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant on Wednesday afternoon.

The function will be organised over video conferencing between the three leaders in their respective capitals and the fourth point will be at the plant site in Tirunelveli.

The chairman and managing director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India and site director RS Sundar, among others, will be present during the function.

This is a major milestone for the project that has been beset with troubles of various kinds over the years: soon after the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Inter-Governmental deal in 1988, it was stuck in the international and domestic political developments in both countries.

But the biggest challenge it faced was when people from the coastal villages that surrounded the plant rose in protest against setting the complex. They were alarmed after reports began coming in about radiation contamination, when a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan was flooded following tsunami.

The activists, whose campaigns were rather passive till then, quickly captured the opportunity to raise a massive and well-organised protest in the second half of 2011. It was not enough to stop the project, but they managed to slow it down and also raised a series of questions about the liability clause, an important but seldom discussed aspect till then.

The protest has finally turned docile over years, and the cost of the project went up from Rs 13,171 crore to around Rs 22, 000 crore.