Unit I of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project dedicated to nation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin dedicated the first unit of the ambitious Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu to the nation.
KKNPP was dedicated by the leaders through video conferencing from Delhi and Moscow. It has India’s single largest nuclear generation unit with capacity of 1000 megawatt (MW)
Key Facts

• The KKNPP is located in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu, around 650 km from Chennai. It is built under India-Russian Nuclear agreement of 1988.
• KKNPP is India’s nuclear power plant to use imported PWR technology. It has VVER (Water-Water Energetic Reactor) type light water reactors.
• The reactors are built by the NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India) and Russia’s Atomstroyexport Company, a subsidiary of Rosatom.
• The Unit I of the KKNPP is already in service since December 2014 and was connected to the southern grid in October 2013.
• The first unit till now more than 10,800 million units of power and the plant had attained criticality in July 2013
• The Unit II (1000 MW capactity) of the KKNPP had achieved criticality in July 2016 will begin power production by end of August 2016.
• Besides, preliminary works are also going on for the construction of third and fourth reactors with Russian technical expertise.
• KKNPP has enhanced safety features which were incorporated in the water cooled, water moderated reactor complex after the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan.

India-Russian Nuclear agreement of 1988: It was signed between the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet leader Mikahil Gorbachev in November 1988. The agreement was revived in 1998 with Russia and construction works started in March 2002 due to the political and economic upheaval in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Note: The allocation power generated from KKNPP-I & II (2000 MW) include Tamil Nadu (925 MW), Karnataka (442 MW), Kerala (266 MW), Puducherry (67 MW). While 300 MW remains unallocated.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2016