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What is the Indian Neutrino Observatory & why Tamil Nadu has said no to it in Supreme Court

Environment experts say proposed project site falls within Periyar tiger corridor & threatens to fragment it, but scientists say it'll be deep underground and won't bother animals.

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Bengaluru: The Tamil Nadu government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court Thursday disallowing the construction of the proposed Indian Neutrino Observatory in Theni district, at the Bodi West Hills site.

The affidavit stated that the proposed particle physics project will affect local biodiversity and tiger species at the Periyar Tiger Reserve and the Mathikettan Shola National Park in the Western Ghats.

The affidavit came in the wake of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) providing a no-objection certificate (NoC) to the project.

“The project in questions falls exactly on the hill slopes of this part of the Western Ghats, which align within it a significant tiger corridor, namely the Mathikettan-Periyar tiger corridor,” said the affidavit. The tiger corridor connects the Periyar Tiger Reserve on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border and the Mathikettan Shola National Park.

The affidavit marked the end of the 13-year struggle to get the project approved and constructed. However, scientists, scientific officials, particle physicists, and Nobel laureates have written to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, urging him to approve the project and assuring him of safety.

ThePrint explains what is the proposed project, the Tamil Nadu government’s objection to it, and what experts have to say about it.

The Indian Neutrino Observatory

The Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a proposed particle physics research mega project. The objective of the project was to study neutrinos in a 1,200-metre deep cave.

A neutrino is a fundamental elementary particle, and atmospheric neutrinos can be studied when solar radiation hits the earth’s atmosphere. They are very hard to detect as they hardly interact with other forms of matter due to their lack of electrical charge. However, they seem to play an important role in the universe of elementary physics, which physicists have been trying to understand for a few decades now.

They are produced in high-energy processes such as within stars and in supernovae. On earth, they are produced by particle accelerators and nuclear power plants.

Neutrino detectors are often built underground to isolate them from cosmic rays from space and any other sources of background radiation. Because neutrinos are so small, they barely interact with matter, passing through most atoms, and thus most matter, without interaction.

So far, neutrino physics has been mostly limited to outer space sources, observing neutrinos from farther-away stars and galaxies. There are about 20 or so neutrino detectors, telescopes, and experiments around the world.

The INO is proposed to be operated by seven primary and 13 participatory research institutes, spearheaded by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Indian Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IIMSc). The Neutrino Collaboration Group which headed the project signed an MoU in 2002 and the project was conceived in 2005.

The project was due to be completed in 2015 but met first resistance for the proposed site in 2009 from the Union environment ministry. The site was ultimately shifted to Bodi West Hills, and the project was approved in 2015 with a Rs 1,500 crore funding. If completed, the project will have a 50 kilotonne magnet, the world’s biggest.

Ecological concerns

Environment experts say the project site falls within a tiger corridor and threatens to fragment it.

The Mathikettan Shola National Park in Idukki district of Kerala falls under the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ), but not the Tamil Nadu side, making the INO project free of clearance from the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL). However, 31.45 hectares of the construction site fell inside the Mathikettan-Periyar tiger corridor, one of India’s 32 major tiger corridors recognised by the NTCA.

Experts involved in the project have stated that it poses no risk to the tigers or the corridor as the tunnels and the laboratory would lie deep underground, even if in the designated tiger reserve.

Gobinda Majumder, project director of the Pottipuram Research Centre at TIFR stated that the tunnels used are similar to railway tunnels and are tens of meters deep before they enter forest land, while the tiger corridor lies completely within the forest.

“Hence, there will be no obstruction to tiger (or any large animal) movement on the forest surface since there will be no activity on forest land. The only activity will be deep under the forest (from 10s of m to 1000 m underground),” he said in a statement.

However, the TN government’s affidavit states that even though experiments in the observatory would be conducted over a kilometre underground, construction activities like large-scale blasting, excavating, tunnelling, and transportation, as well as safety and security measures around the facility, would affect tiger activity as well as the local ecology.

“At a depth of 1,000 meters, mountain rock would be under tremendous pressure and the vertical stress is expected to be greater than 270 kg per square metre. This will create problems like rock bust and roof collapse,” the affidavit said.

The site is also located in the area that links the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala with Srivilliputhur Meghamalai Tiger Reserve. This entire region facilities biodiversity by providing a corridor for large and small mammals to migrate through seasonally. Additionally, they also enable ranging tigers to shift territory in the wild, allowing them to move from one tiger reserve to another, increasing genetic diversity among the few tigers left.

Opposition to the project has also come in the form of myths around radiation and neutrinos, which scientists have been quick to correct.

(Edited by Neha Mahajan)

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