Smoke alarm incident in Kaiga plant was not major: Director

"No inquiry is necessary. It was made out to be something major, it is not. Yes, the smoke detection alarm went off around 4.30 AM on April 8 following which the 220 MWe unit III was shut down and AERB was informed about it immediately," Plant Director J P Gupta told PTI.

He also said the unit would resume generation by April 17.
"As it is normally done in case of any incident, minor or major, we will submit a report to AERB in 20 days about the detection of smoke in an inaccessible area, near the pump in Unit 3 on April 8 due to which unit was shut down," he said.

The plant, Gupta said, had different committees including the Sectional (depending on which section the incident occurred) Root Cause Committee and the Station Root Cause Committee, which will go into occurrence of smoke and will submit a report to the Station Operation Review Committee.

"Whatever, recommendations are made by these committees will be implemented and in case immediate action is required, it will be taken and we will submit a report to AERB in 20 days," Gupta said.

He said it was already planned to shut off this unit next month for carrying out routine surveillance tests, done once in two years in the unit shut down state."In this case the plant has gone in for surveillance little earlier than scheduled. These tests will now be carried out since the unit has been shut and it would resume generation by April 17," he said.

The Kaiga plant, in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, has four units with a generation capacity of 220 MWe each.

At present Unit-1, 2 and 4 were operating safely and generating about 560 MWe.