Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on an official tour to Africa, congratulated the atomic energy scientists of Russia and India following the announcement that the second unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Station (KKNPS) on Sunday night. “This is a piece of great news which makes us happy. I congratulate the atomic energy scientists, both from Indian and Russian side for this major technological success,” Modi tweeted on Monday morning.
The 1,000 MW reactor, built with Russian assistance, became critical at 8.56 pm on Sunday. This means the reactor is fully ready to generate power. “It will start generating power within one month. The reactor will reach its full potential of 1,000 MW after three months,” RS Sundar, director, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Station, told The Pioneer over telephone from Kudankulam.
With the second unit of the KNPS becoming ready for power generation, Tamil Nadu stands to gain around 500 MW power with the remaining output getting allocated to States like Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and the union territory of Puducherry.
The works for the second unit had commenced on September 2001. It took almost 15 years for the completion of the reactor and commissioning it, which is being described by atomic energy scientists as a fairly long gestation period.
The reactor was fully imported from Russia following the 1987 agreement signed between the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the then president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. (The Soviet Union got disintegrated into more than 12 countries in 1991following the collapse of the Communist Party rule). This is being seen as one of the reasons for the inordinate delay in the commissioning of the Kudankulam Nulear Plant which is dependent on Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries for spare parts and fuel.
The first unit of the KKNPS became operational on December 31, 2014. But it was shut down in June 2015 reportedly for maintenance works. The Plant resumed power production in after eight months.