By IANS,
New Delhi: The government Wednesday introduced a bill in the Lok Sabha to provide a legal framework to regulate nuclear and radiation safety, and to establish an authority to carry out the task.
The bill comes in the backdrop of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurance in the Lok Sabha during the budget session earlier this year that India’s nuclear safety regulatory framework would be strengthened in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan.
Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office V. Narayanasamy introduced the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill, 2011, which seeks to create the Council for Nuclear Safety (CNS) headed by the prime minister to oversee and review policies relating to radiation safety.
The bill also provides for setting up a Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) to regulate radiation and nuclear safety and achieve the highest standards on the basis of scientific approach, operating experience and best practices followed by the nuclear industry, the statement of objects and reasons of the bill said.
The authority would also ensure the use of radiation and atomic energy in all its applications is safe for the health of the radiation workers, the people and the environment, it said.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, the largest in Japan and also in the world since the Chernobyl accident in 1986, had been caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11 in the Pacific Ocean off Japan which led to a series of equipment failures, nuclear melt down and release of radioactive materials.
The Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill also provides for establishment of regulatory bodies for the purpose of national defence and security, apart from seeking to empower the CNS to form an appellate authority to enable the centre or any other person aggrieved by an order of the NSRA to file an appeal.
The government had set up the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board under the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, to carry out certain regulatory and safety functions. But the Fukushima disaster forced a rethink on the need to further strengthen regulatory mechanisms for nuclear and radiation safety in the country.