K'kulam reactor to be fuelled, protesters to intensify stir

The loading of 163 enriched uranium fuel bundles in the first unit of the two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) will happen around September 11, said a senior official of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) on Friday.

“We expect the fuel loading to happen around September 11. We are not working towards any specific date. Going the current situation, the first reactor will be fuelled by September 15,” said S A Bhardwaj, director (Technical) at NPCIL.

India’s atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up the KNPP at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here, amid protests from the local villagers under the banner People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE).

The PMANE leaders, who are currently at Idinthakarai, a village near Kudankulam, have decided to intensify their protest further by taking out a procession Sep 9 to protest outside KNPP.“Ours is a non-violent protest. Though there is a prohibitory order against assembly of people near the plant we will gather and protest. We have not taken any anticipatory bail against our arrests,” S P Udayakumar, coordinator of PMANE, said over phone from Idinthakarai.