Construction of 3rd plant at Kudankulam to begin by year end

New Delhi, Apr 23 (PTI) India will begin construction of
a third nuclear power plant, in collaboration with Russia, at
Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu by this year end, a top executive of
the state-run Nuclear Power Corporation said here Thursday.

The third unit at Kudankulam could be of a higher 1200 MW
capacity against the 1000 MW each of unit I & II as scientists
are evaluating a new reactor developed by Russia.

"We expect to start construction on Kudankulam III by end
of this year or early 2010," Sudhinder Thakur, Executive
Director (Corporate Planning), Nuclear Power Corporation of
India Limited (NPCIL) told reporters here.

Thakur said NPCIL will receive the techno-commercial
proposal for Kudankulam III by middle of this year.

The agreement to build four more reactors at Kudankulam
was signed during a recent visit of Atomic Energy Commission
Chairman Anil Kakodkar to Russia.

Unit I and II at Kudankulam are at an "advanced stage" of
completion and are expected to be commissioned this year.

Russia is building two 1000 VVER reactors for the
Kudankulam nuclear power plant and during President Dmitry
Medvedev's New Delhi visit in December last year, the two
countries agreed to build four more units.

Another official involved with the Kudankulam project
said that NPCIL was evaluating a new design of VVER-type
reactors of 1200 MW capacity.

Kudankulam will be home to six nuclear reactors built
with Russian technology. Currently, two 1000 MW capacity VVER
reactors are being built at Kudamkulam.

VVER is the Soviet designation for light water
pressurised reactors, which in western countries is known by
PWR acronym.

Russia has agreed to provide supply for the entire
lifetime of the reactors, which is estimated between 40 years
and 60 years.

India has inked the agreement with the erstwhile USSR to
build nuclear reactors at Kudankulam in 1988, in the aftermath
of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

However, the political turmoil that followed after the
collapse of the Soviet Union had put the project on the
back-burner. It was revived 10 years later with the two
countries signing an addendum to the 1988 agreement. Work
began on the Kudankulam project in 2002.

Thakur said India will place units five and six of the
Rawatbhata nuclear power plant under International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards as per the agreement reached
at with the global nuclear watchdog last year.

India has agreed to put 10 pressurised heavy water
reactors under international safeguards as per the separation
plan to differentiate between its civilian and military
nuclear facilities. PTI SKU
SAK