The high-powered review committee on nuclear power safety, newly set up by the atomic energy regulatory board (AERB), soon after the Fukushima nuclear incident following severe earthquake and tsunami in Japan, will have its first meeting here on March 31.

The 10-member committee headed by former chairman AERB S K Sharma will examine all the currently operating 20 reactors to find whether they can withstand severe earthquakes and other external events beyond their design, AERB officials said today.

The AERB has asked the committee to submit an interim report, Chairman, S S Bajaj told PTI.

Asked whether any time line has been fixed, he said, "we have not fixed any timeline for the interim report as the Fukushima Daichi incident is still unfolding."

The committee members include Prof B N Goswami of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, S K Chande, Vice-Chairman AERB, I D Gupta, Director, Central Water and Power Research, Pune, Prof C V R Murthy from IIT Chennai, A K Ghosh, Director, Health and Safety of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, S A Bharadwaj, Director, Technical, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, R Chowdhury, former Director, REactor Group, BARC, A G Chhatre, Associate Director, Safety analysis and Seismology Group of NPCIL,and L R Bishnoi, Head, sitting and structural engineering group of AERB.

Legislation can strengthen AERB's autonomy: Bajaj

Atomic energy regulatory board currently enjoys functional and regulatory independence, and on occasions it dictates terms to other nuclear bodies, such as Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.

However, sometimes issues have been raised regarding statutory status of this autonomy of AERB, which can be formalised by passing a law, AERB chairman S S Bajaj said.

"It (independence) can be strengthened by a suitable legislation," Bajaj told PTI.

There has been a demand to make AERB a statutorily independent body, which some people feel could help it getting external funds for construction of imported power plants.

The amendment of Atomic Energy Act in this regard is already on cards, according to highly-placed sources in department of atomic energy.

AERB has been dealing with 20 operating nuclear power plants, half-a-dozen under-construction plants, fuel- cycle facilities, and thousands of radiation facilities across the country.

"But we have never compromised on the safety of the plants and the workers, and even went to the extent of shutting down the operating plants till the required safety measures were implemented by the operators on several occasions," Bajaj said.

"We can quote several occasions when we had suspended the operations of the plant or construction work for not following safety norms at different sites of NPCIL," said S K Chande, AERB vice-chairman.

"Whatever enforcement actions we have been taking, our decisions on them were never questioned by the operating company," Chande said.

There are numerous examples of AERB's enforcement actions.

In 2004, there was an event at Kakrapar Atomic Power Station where there was an inadvertent power rise in one of the units. Operations were stopped for almost one month in both the units since the event reflected inadequate training of the operators, Chande said.

Likewise, work was also stopped in the operating zirconium sponge plant of nuclear fuel complex, Hyderabad and the material processing plant at IREL Udyogamandal due to deteriorating civil structures

Last Monday, there was a 'discussion meet' organised by AERB for the heads of all DAE units and project directors of NPCIL and BHAVNI on industrial safety which AERB considers equally important as radiation safety.

When asked another commonly raised question, whether AERB can handle the growth in nuclear power generation in the coming years, Bajaj said the Board had recognised the demand for technical manpower, and had already increased it from 160 to 210. It was further planned to be increased to 260 by 2012.

"We also have 150 experts drawn from various institutions like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research and IITs... We also have a lot of retired experts as consultants on various expert committees," Bajaj said.