However, the BARC director continued to refer to what happened on January 21—when six workers received a radiation overdose that grossly exceeded the aerb-recommended limits—as an "accident". For instance: "The accident didn’t take place in the reprocessing plant, the accident took place about 200 metres away from the reprocessing plant in the Waste Tank Farm." The director reiterated: "In our four decades of experience, we’ve never landed ourselves in this kind of a situation and it is the worst case of radiation exposure so far."
While Bhattacharjee said, "The workers were overenthusiastic and there was an error of judgement", the chief superintendent of the plant, K.V. Mahudeesvaran, who guided the media team to the accident site, reconfirmed to Outlook that "the area gamma monitors", which give a visual and audio alarm when there is danger, had been installed only after the incident. "Had the monitors been there, they would have sounded an alarm," he said. When Outlook questioned Bhattacharjee about why the monitors had not been installed earlier, he said: "We couldn’t afford to have them. These are expensive things. We can’t instal them all over Kalpakkam." One of the key demands of the employees association was "area gamma monitors at ALL workplaces".
On why he continued to use "accident" and "incident" interchangeably, Bhattacharjee said: "Maybe inadvertently if I said [so], then I am sorry that I made a mistake. I am not denying that." As KARP continues to remain shut down, the entire PR exercise was ostensibly to establish transparency. But the media was not allowed to meet any of the six affected workers; and the top brass kept away from the accident site.
