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South India's key power plants moving in opposite directions

PICTURE OF CONTRASTS: As Kaiga plant sets new longevity record, Kudankulam mired in woe

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Kudankulam nuclear power plant
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Two nuclear power plants in South India — the Kaiga plant in Karnataka and the controversial Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu — paint a remarkable picture of contrasts.

While the former has created a record for longest continuous run, the latter's operation is marred by frequent outages.

The 220 MW Unit-I of Kaiga's indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) recently set a world record by continuously running for 962 days, while two 1,000 MW units of Kudankulam have been facing frequent long outages since 2017, leaving power managers of the state clueless about meeting power demand. Unit-I remained shut for 158 days in 2018 and 209 days in 2017, while Unit-II was off for 209 and 229 days respectively.

A senior official from the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation told DNA that the frequent long outages leave Tamil Nadu — the largest beneficiary of KKNPP — in a precarious situation.

"Since August 2017, both units of Kudankulam were in simultaneous operation for only 96 days, and both units were simultaneously off the bar for 64 days. For the past two years, there is a large variation in Kudankulam's generation and the beneficiaries were not able to predict the availability of the units. Due to lower availability of KKNPP units, we are forced to procure power from the power exchanges at higher costs to meet the requirement," the official explained.

An NPCIL official said that if there is a technical snag which needs to be attended to immediately, there is no other option but to the unit off the grid during maintenance for "safety reasons". He added that Kaiga and Kudankulam are based on different technologies and so can't be compared. While the former is designed to be refuelled without requiring a shutdown, the latter needs to be shut after 300 days of operation for refuelling. "In 2016, Unit-I of KKNPP ran continuously for 278 days," he said.

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