[1] HN Sethna, Atomic Energy (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1972), p.1.
[2] As quoted by Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1999), p. 47.
[3] For instance David Dietz, an American journalist and Pulitzer prize winner wrote, “With energy as abundant as air we breather, there will be no longer any reason to fight for oil or coal…” in his Atomic Energy in the Coming Era (Dodd Mead: 1945) pp. 12-23. Glenn Seaborg , adviser to US Atomic Energy Commission in 1950s too described it as a “magician’s potion that could free industrial society permanently from all practical bounds”, in Seaborg and William Corliss, Man and Atom: Building a New World through Nuclear Technology (Dutton, 1971).
[4] United Nations, First International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (New York, 1955), vol. 16, p. 33. Emphasis added.
[5] Germany too, in the early 1970s conducted a feasibility study for a project to build a canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Western Desert of Egypt using nuclear demolition. This project proposed to use 213 devices, with yields of 1 to 1.5 megatons detonated at depths of 100 to 500 m, to build this canal for the purpose of producing hydroelectric power.
[6] PM’s statement in Parliament on 27 Feb 2006. Full text available in The Hindu, 28 Feb 2006
[7] “NTPC and NPCIL to jointly develop nuclear power plants in India’, Power Technology, May 2, 2023. Available at https://www.power-technology.com/news/ntpc-npcil-nuclear-power-plants/. Accessed on Feb 23, 2024.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Air Power Studies [CAPS])