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| Another 660 Mw of nuclear power capacity in 6 months |
| Sudheer Pal Singh / New Delhi Jul 02, 2009, 02:18 IST |
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Another 660 Mw of nuclear power capacity should become operational in another six months, from the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP) at Kota and at the Kaiga Atomic Power Project (KAPP) in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district.
RAPP’s current capacity is 740 Mw, using domestic uranium. The two new units, of 220 Mw each, will run on imported uranium, for which agreements were signed this January. The supply has started. Kaiga is presently generating 500 Mw; the new unit is an additional one of 220 Mw. It will also run on imported fuel.
“We have received some consignments of uranium from Russia and France. RAPP units 5 and 6 should be commissioned in six months now, as soon as the pre-commissioning activities are over,” said a senior official from the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). The Kaiga commissioning should follow soon after.
The Indian government has a contract with TVEL, a joint stock company of the Russian Federation, for long-term supply of 2,000 tonnes of natural uranium. In another contract, Areva, the French energy major, has also committed to supply 300 tonnes of the nuclear fuel. Both contracts were signed in January.
The two new units of 220 Mw capacity each at the RAPP will account for around 14 per cent of the 3,160 Mw of nuclear power generation capacity in the pipeline, and the first to receive the newly imported fuel.
The official, however, refused to give details of the quantum of fuel imported and the uranium requirement for nuclear plants like RAPP, citing the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, which prohibits state owned companies from divulging production and consumption details of nuclear fuel.
Experts, however, believe operation of the two RAPP generating units would require around 0.4 kg of uranium daily. The newly imported fuel would be processed at the Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) at Hyderabad before being fed to the two reactors.
At present, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) alone produces nuclear power in the country. Its 17 units have an installed generation capacity of 4,120 Mw, which is about 3-4 per cent of total power generation capacity in the country. The aim is to increase the nuclear generation capacity to 20,000 Mw by the year 2020.
NPCIL is planning to add another 3,160 Mw of capacity from three power plants in two to three years. These are all to be commissioned by 2012. This includes 2,000 Mw from two units of the Kudankulum Atomic Power Project in southern Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli region, 440 Mw from two units of the RAPP, one 220 Mw plant of KAPP in Karnataka and an addition of 500 Mw to the Kalpakkam atomic plant in Tamil Nadu, near Chennai (presently 440 Mw capacity).
Fuel for the Kudankulam power project has already been sourced from Russia and the newly available uranium would be partly fed to the power plants of Rajasthan and Kaiga.
This availability of imported uranium is expected to bring to an end the heavy dependence of nuclear power reactors in the country on domestic uranium. Power generated from the NPCIL-run reactors has been low due to lack of availability of fuel. The official said the company has now been able to ramp up its generation to over two-thirds of its capacity, owing to the exploration of new mines by Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL).
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