Caught in a cauldron of protests against atomic power plants, India's nuclear regulator, AERB is mulling involving the public in the process of granting safety licences to such projects.

The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has drawn lessons from the public hearings conducted while making the Environment Impact Assessment reports for mega projects and plans to incorporate them in giving clearances for nuclear power projects.

"The people should know that they are being heard and their concerns taken onboard with regard to nuclear safety. We are debating how to go about it," AERB Chairman S S Bajaj said here on the sidelines of the India International Nuclear Symposium.

He said AERB would like to hear genuine questions from the public on safety of nuclear power plants and incorporate the responses in the approvals for such projects.

A typical AERB review process is very elaborate and takes a couple of years and thousands of man days. Bajaj said it would be a challenge to involve the public in this exercise where topics like reactor physics and structural mechanics are discussed threadbare.

A possible way to incorporate the public at large would be to invite questions and capture those relevant to the review process, he said.

"The idea is to involve the public in AERB approval process," Bajaj said, making it clear that this debate was started much before the Fukushima accident and the anti-nuclear protests in Kudankulam.