The Sindh High Court in Pakistan ordered a halt to construction of two ACP -1000 nuclear power plants slated for Karachi, siding with petitioners who said the necessary environmental reviews had not been done properly.
Specifically, the petitioners said the Environmental Impact Assessment filed with the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency was done without proper public participation. Among the chief concerns was the lack of an evacuation plan, which needed to be approved and adopted by local government, and the risk of earthquake activity, which is not unheard of in the region.
The ACP-1000 reactors are a Chinese design that have never been built. The reactors, known as K-II and K-III, are 1,100 megawatt power plants expected to be built adjacent to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant, which is also called Kanupp or K-I.
K-I is scheduled to be decommissioned.
Petitioners said that the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission had already begun preparing the site, despite the lack of a proper environment review.