Seminar on Nuclear Energy, TJC

Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy
Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy Seminar on Nuclear EnergySeminar on Nuclear Energy


The Post Graduate departments of Biotechnology, MBA and MCA of T. John college had organized a talk on Nuclear Energy after Fukushima on April 15, 2011. There were student presentations from all the three departments on what nuclear energy is all about? How reactors work? environmental and biological impacts of nuclear disasters, the social and commercial impact of the Fukushima disaster and the effect on the global IT business and how Indian projects funded by Japan have been effected.

The presentations opened the forum for discussion on the impacts, however the ground studies presented by the students were refined by finer inputs from the Chief Guest Ambassador Saurabh Kumar from National Institute of Advanced Studies Bangalore, about what went wrong with Fukushima? How the boiling water reactor works and why the cooling of the reactors did not happen effectively? He compared the design with that of Kalpakam and pointed out a few defects in Fukushima.

The discussion took a turn into the Process Management in the power plant and the lack of stringent review and Mock Drills to mange such crisis. The discussion was open to questions, where faculties questioned on the oversight on critical regulatory measures, and students questioned on the need to depend on nuclear power when a few nations were doing without it. The Chief Guest pointed out that the demand and supply mismatch and the unreliability and unavailability of technology to harness other power sources probably makes nuclear power attractive, more over it is necessary to have safety audits done by external regulatory bodies to check the implementation of safety precautions. He said that as the story unfolds, the case will be studied extensively, as to what could have been done to avoid this mishap.

The intellectual discussion was a great learning and debating exercise for the PG students making them think over a global crisis from all angles. Ambassador Saurabh Kumar highly appreciated the effort of the PG departments to have an interdisciplinary interaction on this issue as awareness on current issues and such discussions can make higher learning more fruitful.