India's first nuclear power units complete 40 years tomorrow

Mumbai, Mar 31 (PTI) The inaugural units of Tarapur
Atomic Power Station (TAPS), India's first nuclear power
plant, will complete 40 years of successful generation of
electricity from nuclear energy power tomorrow.

It was on April 1, 1969, that the two reactors of 160 MW
each built by US power major General Electric (GE) on a
turn-key basis at Tarapur, 120 km from here, were synchronised
to the grid.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), a
public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy
(DAE) will be felicitating those engineers who were
responsible for synchronising the plants to the grid at a
function in Tarapur tomorrow, TAPS officials said.

The station has generated more than 77 billion units of
electricity so far, and is supplying it to Maharashtra and
Gujarat at a tariff of 94 paise per unit.

"TAPS is a very successful project of the Department of
Atomic Energy. The plant was set up under an agreement
between the Governments of India and USA," Atomic Energy
Commission Member Dr M R Srinivasan, who was then responsible
for signing the contract with GE, told PTI.

India was the first country to get nuclear energy in Asia
besides erstwhile USSR as early as 1969, he said.

"It took less than ten years from the time of site
selection to the synchronisation to the power grid of the two
units and we never thought it would run successfully for 40
years despite US not keeping promises of life time fuel supply
to these reactors," Srinivasan said.

"Even though there was no feedback from the company (GE)
within five years of commissioning, I proudly say that our
engineers are doing a remarkable job in running the reactors
for forty long years," he said adding they were ably helped by
the scientists and engineers of BARC, Nuclear Fuel Complex and
Electronic Corporation of India.

Today, Tarapur has become a nuclear hub with two more
indigenous plants of 550 MW of pressurised heavy water
reactors.

M H P Rao, M S F Raghavan along with Srinivasan and many
others will be felicitated at a function to be held in
Tarapur.

NPCIL officials said that over a period of time the plant
has been continuously refurbished and upgraded to meet the
current safety standards.

The station performance is comparable to the best
operating Nuclear Power plants in the world and received
several awards and underwent peer review by World Association
of Nuclear Operators (WANO) in 2004, NPCIL said. PTI LV
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