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Power production at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) is likely to resume in the next two days.
Unit I generating 1,000 Mw was shut down on Wednesday night due to some “technical issue” in its circuits and works.
“There is some technical issue due to which we had to shut down the unit. We are working on it and will overcome the issue in two days’ time,” said RS Sundar, site director of KNPP.
According to Power System Operation Corporation Ltd’s southern regional load despatch centre, the unit had experienced a forced outage on January 14 evening, and the reason mentioned was “tripped while charging GT#2 of KNPP, reactor and turbine generator tripped”.
Meanwhile, the steering committee of The People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) alleged while the KNPP authorities maintain there hasn’t been any major issue with the reactor’s core technology, the technical issues show the project, certified as safe by various scientists, “is heading in a dangerous direction”.
The facility has been producing 1000-Mw before the technical problem came to the fore. Now, it is expected to reach full production two days from restarting it. The Kudankulam Nuclear plant commenced commercial production on December 31, 2014. Unit-I was connected to the southern grid and the operation of the first 1,000 Mw unit began from December 31 last year.
India’s atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up two 1,000-Mw Russian reactors in Kudankulam of Tirunelveli district, located 650 km from here, with an outlay of over Rs 17,000 crore. The first unit attained criticality in July 2013.
