 "Power production restarts at Kudankulam Nuclear plant")
The 1,000 MW nuclear power plant at Kudankulam has restarted power generation from Sunday, according to Power System Operation Corporation Ltd (POSOCO).
The unit had been shut on the night of February 4, following a steam leak in the feed water system in the turbine building.
Originally, the unit was expected to restart on February 7, but was delayed.
On Sunday, the unit touched a peak generation of 413 MW at 10.41 pm, while the average generation for the day was 5 MW.
The power plant was set up by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) at Kudankulam in Tirunelvelli district, around 650 km from Chennai, at an outlay of over Rs.17,000 crore. The first unit attained criticality, which is the beginning of the fission process, in July 2013. Subsequently the second unit was connected to the southern grid in October 2013, while commercial power generation began only on December 31, 2014.
The unit was shut down in June 2015 for 60 days for refuelling and annual maintenance in June 2015.
The unit supplies power to Tamil Nadu (562.5 MW), Puducherry (33.5 MW), Kerala (133 MW), Karnataka (221 MW) and Andhra Pradesh (50 MW).
The second 1,000 MW unit at Kudankulam is expected to go critical, or start the fission process sometime this year.
Meanwhile the AERB has given its nod for site preparation work for building the third and fourth units at Kudankulam. The two units would cost around Rs 40,000 crore.
