Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant
KOODANKULAM NUCLEAR POWER PLANT Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power station currently under construction in Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Project investment cost to India was estimated to be US$ 3. 5 billion in a 2001 agreement. History An Inter-Governmental Agreement on the project was signed on November 20, 1988 by 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). [2] There are negotiations over the possible addition of a naval base at the site, both safeguarding the project and as a presence in the southern tip of the country. [3] A small port became operational in Kudankulam on January 14, 2004.
This port was established to receive barges carrying over sized light water reactor equipment from ships anchored at a distance of 1. 5 kilometres (0. 93 mi). Until 2004 materials had to be brought in via road from the port of Tuticorin, risking damage during transportation. [4] 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. [5][6] The new reactors would 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. [7] Technical description Two 1 GW reactors of the VVER-1000 model are being constructed by the Nuclear Power corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Atomstroyexport. When completed they will become the largest nuclear power generation complex in India producing a cumulative 2 GW of electric power. [8] Both units are water cooled water moderated power reactors. 9] The first was scheduled to start operation in December 2009 and the second one was scheduled for March 2010. Currently, the official projections put unit 1 into operation in June 2011, and unit 2 in March 2012. [10][11][12] Four more reactors are set to be added to this plant under a memorandum of intent signed in 2008. [13] 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. 14] The nuclear project will be commissioned in April 2011. [15] Protest against the opening of Nuclear Reactors When construction began, there was not much opposition against the project[Ref Required]. Recently a slew of social workers and environmental activists have begun protests. They said the population density was too high[Ref Required]. .Protestors cite the examples like Chernobyl Russia. They also quote the current Japan Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster during the Tsunami that affected Japan. The recent nuclear incident at Marcoule, southern France has further aggravated the protest.
The protestors also say that, Germany and many other countries are reconsidering their nuclear energy policy. Japan has begun a similar discussion[Ref Required]. The key debate will revolve around the question of relative risk posed by nuclear power plant in comparison to short and long term risk posed by current use of non-renewable energy sources such as coal. There is also fear that the fish and other life inside the sea will be affected by the water discharged from the nuclear reactor into the Bay of Bengal[Reference Required].
The area around the Koodankulam reactor is home to a lot of small scale fishermen. The fear is that they might be affected[Reference Required]. However the health risk posed by nuclear reactor is taken seriously by the scientific community and safety mechanisms are being created and updated regularly to meet national and International standards[[16]],Renowned astronomer and former Greenpeace members like Patrick Moore have supported nuclear energy as a safe and clean alternative energy strategy to mitigate the effects of climate change. [17] The protest is as of now of a non-violent nature.
However, the present Tamilnadu government have defended the Koodankulam project INDIAN REACTORS ARE SAFE, SAYS SCIENTIST-‘INDIAN NUKE POWER PLANTS SAFE’ Bangalore: Japan’s killer earthquake that caused a nuclear reactor to shut down and a radiation scare are unlikely to negatively impact India’s ambitious nuclear power programme, says a nuclear scientist and former official of the atomic energy regulatory board (AERB)”I honestly am not worried about the Japanese incident casting a ‘scientific’ shadow in India,” K. S. Parthasarathi, who was until recently the secretary of AERB, told IANS. I know the country will stand it. ” The committee was set up in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Japan, triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami simultaneously hitting the Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011 The committee, appointed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) of India in March, put out the a bare-bones report earlier this month. The final detailed report is still under AERB review. He said the Kudankuam site was in a very low seismic category zone and that the structures in the plant could withstand the severest earthquake. The safe grade elevation at the plant starts at 7. 5 meters which is much above the expected tsunami levels. ” “This magnitude earthquake may happen only in the Himalayan region and that is one of the reasons we are not going to build any reactor there. “Our existing reactors withstood without problem all major tremors like the 7. 7 magnitude quake that rocked Bhuj in Gujarat in 2001,” he said. There are some 60 sensors in a reactor, any of which can shut down the reactor automatically if it sensed something wrong.
In the case of the Bhuj earthquake, the reactors did not even shut down. When a hydrogen explosion at the Narora reactor stopped the coolant flow to the reactor core in 1989, no radiation leak took place as the passive cooling system took over, he said. At the Tarapur atomic power station, where two units are 40 years old, they had undergone detailed safety audits in 2004 and requirements to upgrade the safety systems to current levels were incorporated, Mr. Jain said, adding that the company was meeting all the norms of nuclear safety.
Also Indian plants had a passive system for cooling the reactors which was not dependent on power supply. R Bhattacharya, chairman of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) also says that all nuclear power plants in India periodically undergo safety reviews, which are upgraded when required Because of its geographic location, Japan is vulnerable to high intensity earthquake, Parthasarathi said. “The Indian condition is different. Even then we study three-year micro-seismic data and look at the historical data of a site before locating an atomic reactor there. “
KOODANKULAM NUCLEAR POWER PLANT: PROTESTORS END FAST AFTER 12 DAYS The mass fast against the nuclear plant ended after Jayalalithaa met the protesters. A day after announcing to withdraw the indefinite hunger strike being observed by over 100 villagers against the under-construction Koodankulam nuclear power plant, the protestors ended their fast after 12 days on Thursday morning. The protestors however insisted that their struggle against the two reactors of 1,000 megawatt capacity each, being developed under Indo-Russian collaboration, would continue until it was finally scrapped.
They had on Wednesday announced to end the protest fast after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa agreed for a Cabinet resolution to request the Centre to halt the project. The breakthrough came after the protestors’ representatives met Jayalalithaa and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s emissary — Minister of State in the PMO V. Narayanasamy. After meeting Jayalalithaa, the convenor of People’s Movement Against Atomic Power, S. V. Udhayakumar, had said: “The chief minister has asked us to call off and we have accepted that. ” The state is facing a shortage of 3,500MW and we can solve some problems if the plant is commissioned. Work on Kudankulam has been going on for 10 years and there was no problem. Protests have cropped up just months before the commissioning. ” He said chief minister J Jayalalithaa had reviewed all the safety measures in place and that “the government would not implement anything harmful to the publicWe are convinced about the safety. Plant director M Kasinathan Balaji said fishermen from surrounding areas had been taken to the plant near Kota in Rajasthan to prove there would be no danger to their livelihood. There are seven nuclear power stations in the country and there has been no problem in the surrounding localities,” he said. ROSATOM The Kudankulam Nuclear Plant that Russia is building in India meets all the safety requirements and there will be no change in the construction schedule, according to Sergey Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom. Rosatom Nuclear Energy State Corporation (Rosatom) is a State Corporation in Russia, the regulatory body of the Russian nuclear complex. It is headquartered in Moscow.. Even if, in the wake of Fukushima, you try to imagine what else should be added to the nuclear plant design to enable it to withstand every conceivable combination – earthquakes, tsunami, power and water supply cuts, and so on — Kudankulam already has them all”, said Kiriyenko, who took part in the meeting between President Medvedev and the Indian Prime Minister. “When construction was launched, some asked whether the safety measures were excessive because they set tough requirements in terms of combination and duplication of active and passive safety systems.
It is the only power plant outside the Russian Federation to have a system of passive heat control ruling out a repeat of the Japanese scenario: heat is removed by airflows,” Kiriyenko explained. In the opinion of the head of Rosatom, the first two units at the Kudankulam Nuclear Plant meet not today’s requirements but tomorrow’s. “It is the safest plant in India today. I would even hazard to say that, in terms of the combination of active and passive safety systems, it is the only station in the world today, apart from some plants in the
