Construction work on the 500 mega watt (MW) Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) here is going as per schedule, according to Prabhat Kumar, Project Director of the PFBR.
Mr. Kumar, while interacting with journalists from Chennai early this week, said that the PFBR was indigenously developed on the basis of experiments carried out at the fast breeder test reactor at IGCAR.
About 80 per cent of the reactor project, estimated to cost Rs.5,677 crore, had been completed. Pointing out that no time frame has been fixed for the commissioning of the project, Mr. Kumar said, “We are concentrating on the completion of the construction work and by mid-2012 we will be able to know the date for the commissioning of the project.” He said that two more PFBRs were in the pipeline at Kalpakkam.
To a query whether water released from the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) would be detrimental to the fish population, K. Ramamurthy, Station Director, MAPS, said the temperature of water released from MAPS was less than the stipulated norm of seven degree Celsius.
S.C. Chetal, Director, Indira Gandhi Central Atomic Research (IGCAR), in response to doubts being raised about the safety of the nuclear stations, said that if the allegations about the safety of the reactors and other misconceptions were true, they would have been shut long ago. He asserted that nuclear power stations in the country were operating without any major incidents for the last 40 years.
