Uranium ore mine commissioned in Andhra Pradesh

India commissioned a uranium ore mine and processing plant in the state on Friday which is estimated to have one of the mainly important uranium reserves in the world and could fuel 25 percent of the country's nuclear plants.

Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Srikumar Banerjee commissioned the Rs. 1,106 crore plant developed by the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) at Thummalapalle in YSR Kadapa district, which is expected to have world's largest uranium reserves.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Banerjee told reporters that India now has the potential to develop its own uranium ore mines as an alternative of depending on imports. The newly-commissioned plant has a capability of mining and processing 3000 tonnes of uranium a day.

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India's uranium mines cast a health shadow

Gudiya Das whines as flies settle on her face, waiting for her mother to swat them even as she lies on a cot in Ichra, one in a cluster of villages approximately India's only functioning uranium mines.The 12-year-old, whose skeletal frame makes her look regarding half her age, was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy when she was a year old.

"Back then there were 33 disabled kids here, now there are additional than a hundred," her father, Chhatua Das told AFP in his home in Jaduguda valley in the eastern state of Jharkhand.For Das and his wife Lakshmi, who have lost six children earlier than the age of one, there is only one possible culprit -- the nearby mines run by the state-owned Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL).

"I know there is some connection among the mining and what's happened to my daughter," Lakshmi told AFP. "It's because of the uranium in the water here."Environmental groups say the mining company is pollute the groundwater by dumping radioactive waste within three so-called tailings ponds that hold the sludge created by the mining process -- a charge vehemently denied by UCIL.