K'kulam commercial operation delayed

Commercial operations at the 1,000 MW unit 1 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) is postponed to April.

Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), which had earlier announced that commercial operations would begin by February end, confirmed that it was put back by nearly two months to April.

Company sources declined to provide a reason for the postponement, but said the project’s physical progress was 99.84 per cent as of January this year.

It also said that the commercial operations of the 1,000 MW KNPP unit 2, which has achieved physical progress of 96.74 per cent by January, will begin in December.
India's atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu at a cost of over Rs 17,000 crore.
The first unit of KNPP attained criticality in July 2013, which is the beginning of the fission process.

In August 2013, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) had allowed the unit to generate power up to 50 percent (500 MW) of the rated capacity, which it raised to 75 per cent last month.