BY S VENKAT NARAYAN Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, March 19: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa today gave her government’s go-ahead to the controvversial Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) being built with Russian technology in the state’s Tirunelveli district.
In a statement issued in Chennai after a meeting of her cabinet, Ms Jayalalithaa said: "In accordance with (today’s) Cabinet decision, immediate steps will be taken (to facilitate commissioning) of the plant."
This brings to an end the uncertaintly that threatened the nuclear plant since last September, when local people began protest hunger strikes against the plant on the grounds that it poses a danger to their lives.
The chief minister also announced a five-billion Indian rupee special development package for the area where the nuclear plant is located.
She also sought the cooperation of political parties and all concerned to immediately resume work at the plant, stalled following protests since September 2011, spearheaded by the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE).
In the meanwhile, for the first time in the past seven-and-a-half months, the police acted against the anti-KNPP protestors on Monday when the law-enforcers arrested nine anti-KKNPP protestors, including the two members of the anti-KNPP struggle committee.
The state cabinet has decided to allocate INR five billion for locals to set up a cold storage for fish catch, construct houses, lay roads and repair mechanised fishing boats, Jayalalithaa said.
The decision comes a day after completion of polling at Sankarankoil, which falls in the same district.
Readers will recall that the project has had a chequered history. It was on November 20, 1988 that an Inter-Governmental Agreement on the project was signed by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The project remained in limbo for 10 years due to political and economic upheaval in Russia after the post-1991 Soviet breakup, and also due to objections of the United States on the grounds that the agreement does not meet the 1992 terms of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
A small port became operational in Kudankulam in January 2004. It was established to receive barges carrying over-sized light water reactor equipment from ships anchored at a distance of 1.5 kilometres. Until then, materials had to be brought in via road from the port of Tuticorin, risking damage during transportation.
In 2008, negotiation on building four additional reactors at the site began. Though the capacity of these reactors has not been declared, it is expected that the capacity of each reactor will be 1000 MW or 1 GW. The new reactors will bring the total capacity of the power plant to 9200 MW or 9.2 GW.
In June 2011, Sergei Ryzhov, the chief designer of the light water VVER nuclear reactors used at this Nuclear Power Plant, was killed in an airplane accident. The plane belonging to the Rus-Air airlines was flying from Moscow to the Karelian capital Petrozavodsk.
Two 1 GW reactors of the VVER-1000 model are being constructed by the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Russia’s Atomstroyexport. When completed, they will become the largest nuclear power generation complex in India producing a cumulative 2 GW of electric power.
Both units are water-cooled, water-moderated power reactors. The first was scheduled to start operation in December 2009 and the second one was scheduled for March 2010. Before the locals began their agitation, the official projections put unit 1 into operation in December 2011, and unit 2 about a year thereafter. These will have to be rescheduled yet again.
Four more reactors are set to be added to this plant under a memorandum of intent signed in 2008. A firm agreement on setting up two more reactors, has been postponed pending the ongoing talks on liability issues.
Under an inter-government agreement signed in December 2008 Russia is to supply to India four third generation VVER-1200 reactors of 1170 MW.
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