New Delhi: On Sunday January 3, 2010, the Government of India made the announcement that scientific establishments have been asked to reinforce their safety standards. The announcement was made in wake of incidents like the laboratory fire at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and radioactive contamination of a drinking water cooler at the Kaiga nuclear plant.
Minister of State for Science and Technology, Prithviraj Chavan, in an interview to NDTV told that he has instructed the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) labs not to take things for granted. While replying to queries about safety norms in the wake of last week's fire at BARC in Mumbai and the earlier incident of radioactive contamination of drinking water at the nuclear facility at Kaiga in Karnataka, Chavan said he was not satisfied with the present procedures.
According to Mr Chavan, all the scientific establishments would have to reinforce their safety standards and work procedure. The minister said investigations in both Kaiga and BARC incidents were in progress. He said the incident at Kaiga was the work of some disgruntled employee and efforts were being made to establish his identity.
As per sources, the incident of radiation contamination of a drinking water cooler at the Kaiga nuclear plant in November had rendered around 55 employees sick. Moreover, the minister is constantly in touch with the director of BARC complex and forensic and scientific teams were at work to investigate the fire in one of the chemistry labs in which two research scientists died.
