On Chernobyl’s 40th anniversary, NAPM calls for moratorium on new nuclear plants in India

By A Representative 

On the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) has demanded an immediate moratorium on all new nuclear fission-based power plants in India and a time-bound, planned phaseout of nuclear energy worldwide, warning that the “nuclear-industrial-military complex” continues to threaten humanity’s very existence.

In a hard-hitting statement issued on April 26, the NAPM said that history’s costly lessons — Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki — must compel nations to abandon dangerous nuclear technology and warfare, and instead invest in “non-displacing and ecologically safe energy alternatives.”

Calls for Moratorium, Drastic Amendment to SHANTI Act

The NAPM’s demands come as India accelerates its nuclear expansion under the newly passed Sustainable Harvesting and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025, which has repealed the 1962 Atomic Energy Act and opened the sector to private and foreign participation.

The alliance has called on the Government of India to:

- Impose an immediate moratorium on building and commissioning any more nuclear fission-based power plants anywhere in India.

- Conduct a comprehensive review and drastic amendment of the SHANTI Act, given the “massive dangers of internal nuclear proliferation.”

- Urge all political parties, institutional bureaucracy and the higher judiciary to understand the grave implications of nuclear energy and ensure that law, public policy and jurisprudence do not promote nuclear technology that would imperil the environment and communities over generations.

The NAPM has also demanded that international and national financial institutions stop financing nuclear power ventures, and that the UN General Assembly issue an urgent global call to stop any new nuclear fission-based energy infrastructure, citing “the deep and intimate connections between nuclear fission energy and nuclear weapons.”

A Grim Pattern: Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island

Recalling that the explosion at Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then Soviet Union (now Ukraine) on April 26, 1986, unleashed one of the worst technological catastrophes in human history, the NAPM noted that the disaster was “not an isolated accident,” but was preceded by the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 and followed by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011 — “together forming a grim pattern that exposes the inherent risks of nuclear fission technology.”

The NAPM pointed out that even today, over five million (50 lakh) people live in contaminated regions. Entire communities were uprooted — over 3,50,000 people were forcibly displaced, often permanently, suffering “deep psychological and social trauma.” Thousands of children developed thyroid cancer due to radioactive iodine exposure, particularly through contaminated milk.

“Chernobyl must not be remembered merely as history. It must be heeded as a warning to humanity — not to meddle in risky games that we can’t control and that can jeopardize humanity in its entirety,” the statement said.

India’s Nuclear Push Continues Unabated

Even as the NAPM issued its appeal, India’s nuclear programme achieved significant milestones on the same day. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) announced it has commenced the ‘Spillage to Open Reactor’ stage for Kudankulam Unit-3 in Tamil Nadu, a 1,000 MW unit being developed in technical cooperation with Russia. The company said Units 1 and 2 are already operational and have generated around 121 billion units of electricity, “avoiding about 104 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions.”

Simultaneously, state-owned NTPC announced it is exploring setting up two 700 MW nuclear units in Banka district, Bihar, at an estimated investment of around ₹25,000 crore, as part of the government’s ambition to achieve 100 GW nuclear capacity by 2047. Earlier this month, India also achieved the criticality of a 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed as a “historic milestone” in India’s nuclear journey.

The NAPM, however, dismissed nuclear energy as a ‘clean energy’ option, saying it “carries radiation and waste risks for thousands of years” and has a significant carbon footprint from mining, transportation and construction.

Nuclear Weapons Warning and Waste Dangers

The alliance also warned that nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are “two sides of the same destructive coin,” and criticised the SHANTI Act for diluting liability clauses, which it said shifts nuclear risks from suppliers to the state.

On the issue of nuclear waste, the NAPM said that even under normal operation, nuclear reactors produce highly radioactive waste that remains dangerous for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, with no universally accepted, safe, long-term solution for its disposal. At Chernobyl, tons of radioactive material remain entombed in unstable structures, “requiring continuous oversight and future intervention.”

“Some technologies are too dangerous, too unforgiving of error, and too costly in their consequences to justify their continued expansion,” the NAPM said. “Forty years later, the disaster is not over. It lives on in contaminated lands, in damaged bodies, in displaced communities, and in the unresolved burden of nuclear waste.”

The NAPM has urged governments and corporations to instead invest in decentralised, non-displacing and ecologically safer forms of renewable energy, such as solar and wind.