Kudankulam: G. Sundarrajan, and What a Court Will Not Review

In one line

The Court would not decide whether India should have nuclear power, and then gave fifteen directions about how this station was to be run.

G. Sundarrajan v. Union of India, (2013) 6 SCC 620, decided 6 May 2013 by K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra JJ.

Facts. After the Fukushima accident of 2011, the commissioning of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu was challenged. The appellants questioned the adequacy of the post-Fukushima safety reviews, objected that spent fuel would be stored at the site with no permanent repository, and alleged breaches of environmental law: an environmental clearance of 9 May 1989 granted without an impact study or public hearing, no consent from the State Pollution Control Board, and violation of the coastal regulation zone rules.

Held. All the expert bodies were unanimous that the plant had fully satisfied all safety norms, and the Court could not sit in judgment on the views expressed by the technical and scientific bodies; the decision to set up the plant, being part of the national policy expressed in the Atomic Energy Act, was not open to question before it; and the plant was being established not to negate the right to life but to protect it. The Court permitted commissioning subject to fifteen directions, including final clearance for commissioning by the Board, the Nuclear Power Corporation and the Department of Atomic Energy before the plant was made operational, inspection at least once in three months, safe management of spent fuel under a surveillance and monitoring programme, periodic review by the Board of the design safety of the away from reactor storage, a deep geological repository at the earliest, radioactive discharges within the regulator's limits, emergency exercises under the National Disaster Management Guidelines, 2009, and oversight of every aspect by the Board, the Corporation, the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, with a report filed before the Court before commissioning.

Why it matters. It is the leading Indian case on nuclear energy, and the answer MU's question is asking for.

A currency note, as of September 2026. The structural criticism in this chapter is of the law as it stands. The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Act, 2025 (Act No. 39 of 2025, the SHANTI Act) was enacted in December 2025 but is not yet in force as of September 2026; on commencement its section 91 repeals both the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. Its section 17 deems the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, constituted under section 27 of the 1962 Act, to be constituted under the new Act, which sets out its composition, tenure and functions, its Chairperson and Members being appointed by the Central Government on the recommendation of a search-cum-selection committee constituted by the Atomic Energy Commission (section 17(4)); and its section 26 moves the notification of a nuclear incident to the Central Government, acting on the Board's recommendation.