India, Russia finalise agreement on units 5,6 at Kudankulam

Scaling up cooperation in the atomic energy sector, India and Russia have finalised a general framework agreement and credit protocol for setting up units five and six at the Kudankulam nuclear plant.

The formal announcement of the pact and the credit protocol is likely to be made after bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow in Goa on the sidelines of BRICS Summit.

"Russia and India finalised 'General Framework Agreement' and a 'Credit Protocol' for Units 5 and 6 and are planning to announce it in Goa," Russian sources said.

They said the two countries are also planning a ceremony of "first pour" of concrete to the foundation of Unit 3 and 4 and a ceremony of inauguration of Unit 2 of the Kudankulam nuclear plant.

Both ceremonies will witness the participation of Putin and Modi as well as Kudankulam engineers in Tamil Nadu via video-conference, they added.

On August 10, the first unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear was dedicated to the nation jointly by Modi and Putin who had participated in the ceremony from Moscow via video-conferencing.

The Kudankulam 1 has been jointly built by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India and Russia's Rosatom and it had started generating electricity in 2013.

The agreement for the project was inked by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988 but actual work on the ground started only in 1997.

The unit 1 and 2 of Kudankulam plant were built at a cost of Rs 20,962 crore. A major share of power generated in the plant goes to Tamil Nadu, followed by Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry.

Each of the units has a capacity to generate 1,000 MW of power.