Coimbatore: Amid the raging row on the Kudankulan nuclear plant, Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah on Sunday stressed the need for nuclear energy and said the country ought to have all types of power.
"India has to have all types of power, has to have fossil fuel or Nuclear power," he said.
Though Germany has planned to phase out nuclear power by 2017, India cannot afford it and there was the need to have nuclear power, he said.
The KNPP in Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli district has run into trouble following protests from anti-nuclear activists and locals who want the project to be scrapped citing safety concerns.
Farooq said a lot of complaints were received from wind power producers that there were large amount of arrears from the State Governments for their supply, due to which they were not able to pay banks.
Since there were no adequate transmission lines, the producers could not evacuate the wind power, losing the grid connectivity, Abdullah told on the sidelines of inauguration of R and D Wing at Park College of Engineering and Technology, at Kaniyur, 25 km from.
Considering this the ministry would either ask the Centre to assist the State by providing funds to create enough transmission lines to absorb the generated wind power or to "cut at sources" so that Centre can make direct payment to the producers.
Stating that wind producers in Tamil Nadu also were to receive arrears from the State Government, Abdullah said the ministry would consult the State government in this regard.
Later launching new G97-2 MW Wind turbine manufactured by Gamesa in the city, Abdullah said India is in the fifth position in wind power production with 17,000 MW and should become number one in the World.
Asking the companies to go for extensive research to bring in new technologies, the minister said research was going on to generate power from tidal wave.
Comments
0 comment