The significance of commercial generation of power from the first unit at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project is that the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) will start charging money from the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) to which it sells the electricity.
>Kudankulam-1 has been declared a commercial unit from the midnight of December 31, 2014. “We are working out the tariff per unit that we will be charging from the SEBs,” a top NPCIL official said.
The first unit went critical in July 2013. The NPCIL has been selling the generation of this “infirm power” to the State Electricity Boards from July 2013 at Re.1.22 a unit. The NPCIL officials indicated that the sale of power to the SEBs on a commercial basis would be at a much higher rate.
R.S. Sundar, Site Director, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, said Kudankulam-1 had been generating its full power of 1,000 MWe from December 10, 2014, which meant a generation of 20.4 million units a day. So far, the cumulative number of hours that the unit’s turbine generator is in service is 5,266 hours.
The present allocation, as per the stipulation of the Union Ministry of Power, is that out of 1,000 MWe from the first unit, Tamil Nadu will get 562.50 MWe, Andhra Pradesh 50 MWe, Karnataka 221 MWe, Kerala 133 MWe and Puducherry 33.50 MWe. “This is as per the latest notification from the Central Electricity Authority,” said Mr. Sundar.
The turbine blades which were damaged in the first unit a few months ago were replaced with those from the second unit. So the original equipment manufacturers are now providing the second unit with the new blades and the work is being done on them at the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Hyderabad, Mr. Sundar said.
The second unit at Kudankulam, also of 1,000 MWe capacity, will reach criticality in 2015.
Russian reactors
The two reactors at Kudankulam were supplied by Russia. They use enriched uranium as fuel and light water as coolant. Russia has given a commitment to India that it will supply enriched uranium to the Kudankulam reactors for their lifetime. The NPCIL built the two reactors.
Two more Russian reactors, each of 1,000 MWe capacity, will be built at Kudankulam. The NPCIL again will build them. These third and fourth reactors will together cost more than Rs.39,500 crores.
The Kudankulam site is big enough to accommodate fifth and sixth reactors too.
