Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Kudankulam nuclear plant begins power generation

Good news for the people of Tamil Nadu – Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, that has come up despite huge protests, on Tuesday morning began generating power and is expected to begin to ease the acute power shortage situation in the state.

At 2.45 am on Tuesday the first unit of the 2X1000 MW power plant, generated 160 MW of electricity which was fed into the southern grid, plant officials said.

Plant site director RS Sundar said in a statement, ”the First Unit of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), is synchronized to the grid on 22.10.2073 at 0245 hours and generating 160 MWe. The power will be further raised to 500 MWe, 750 MWe and 1000 MWe in stages,”.

“At every stage, various tests are conducted and the technical parameters are verified. Based on the results of the tests at each of the stages and with AERB clearances, subsequent stages are reached.

With the addition of KKNPP Unit#1 of 1000 MWe capacity, Nuclear Power contribution in the Country will increase from 4780 MWe to 5780 MW,  he said. The Kudankulam plant, he said, was the 20th Nuclear Power Station of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), connected to power
grid in our country.

With this, the first of the two 1000 MW nuclear reactors erected at Kudankulam inTirunelveli district, located some 650 km south of Chennai has commenced commercial production.

This unit had attained criticality in July and was undergoing a series of tests after it got permission from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board in the month of August. After initial hiccups and eliminating teething troubles, the officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) that is building the nuclear power project there managed to commence production on Tuesday.

This is good news for Tamil Nadu as power from KNPP is expected to ease the acute power shortage situation in the state that has witnessed long power cuts for domestic and industrial consumers across the states.

Tamil Nadu is expected to get roughly half the power generated from the first unit, which has a capacity of 1000 MW when fully operational. According to TN generation and distribution corporation officials, TN’s share out of the first unit would be 463 MW.

As and when the power comes to southern grid from the KNPP, it would ease the power shortage to some extent, the power utility company officials said.

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