KARACHl: The Sindh High Court on Friday extended for another week its stay order restraining the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) from carrying out work on the two nuclear power plants project in Karachi without adhering to environmental laws.

A two-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar was hearing a petition challenging the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa), which approved the two plants.

The petition, filed by Sharmeen Obald Chinoy, Dr Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, Dr A.H.

Nayyar and Arif Belgaumi named the PAEC, Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), Sepa, Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pepa) and the environment and alternative energy department of Sindh as respondents.

The bench that also comprised Justice Shahnawaz Tariq had earlier asked the proponents of the project not to begin work unless they met the requirements set under Section 12 of the Environmental Protection Act and put the project to the EIA as prescribed under the law.

The PAEC recently started preparing sites for the two nuclear power plants K-2 and K-3 adjacent to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (Kanupp). Besides, subsequent plans for two more plants K-4 and K-5 were also under consideration.

The petitioners` counsel, Advocate Abdul Sattar Pirzada, said the reactors had purportedly been designed and would be built by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) on a design known as ACP-1000, which was not operating even in China.

He said the EIA submitted by the PAEC to the then provincial environmental protection agency was in gross violation of the law because its review was carried out by Pepa without inviting public participation and relevant information was kept secret from the public at large in a highly surreptitious manner.

The petitioners requested the court to declare the EIA and its subsequent review as illegal and of no legal effect and direct the PAEC to submit a fresh EIA to Sepa and Pepa to carry out a well-publicised public review of it in accordance with the Section 17 of the 2014 Act.

They also requested the court to restrain the respondents from carrying out work on the nuclear power plants till the outcome of the review of the new EIA and evacuation plan.

The hearing was adjourned to Dec 12.