What’s wrong with the Jaitapur EIA?
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for Jaitapur was conducted by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) of Nagpur, Maharashtra. NEERI is a public organisation, founded and funded by the Government of India. The report was commissioned and paid for by NPCIL, the government-owned company that is building the Jaitapur nuclear park. This commissioning of one government body by another creates a conflict of interests, making it immediately unlikely for the EIA to be the unbiased and just assessment of environmental impacts that is needed.
The many omissions, assumptions and inaccuracies of the EIA report make it difficult to trust anything contained in its 1200 pages. Even from one page to another, data contradicts itself and scientific names are misspelled. Each fault uncovered makes the EIA look less like a real assessment, and more like a required step towards a predetermined outcome: construction of the Jaitapur nuclear power plant.
Most importantly, the EIA fails to assess the impacts of:
It also fails to examine the impact the 9900 MW nuclear power plant would have on:
The full text of volume I of the EIA report can be downloaded here.