NPCIL moves SC, seeks 5 years to set up AFR unit

With the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) seeking five more years’ time from the Supreme Court for setting up ‘Away From Reactor’ (AFR) facility to store the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plants, an environmental group has sought immediate suspension of operation of the units 1 and 2 and stoppage of construction works in the units 3 and 4.

The NPCIL has moved the apex court recently, seeking an extension till April 2022 to set up AFR as the court’s five-year deadline ends in May this year. The Court in May 2013 had directed NPCIL to set up the AFR facility in five years, while dismissing the petition filed by an environmentalist challenging the KKNPP plant, based on environmental concerns and safety of local people.

 The AFR facility for the KKNPP units “is a challenging task on account of no previous experience with long-term storage requirements of high burnup Russian type PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor) fuel, and thereby being sort of a ‘first of its kind facility’ in India”, the NPCIL said in its affidavit.

Citing the need for considerable “intensive interaction” with the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Russian specialists for the technical conceptualisation of the facility, the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation said that there has been an underestimation in the assessment time needed for setting up the AFR facility for the KKNPP.

The NPCIL argued that spent fuel assemblies, as per design, are required to be kept in Spent Fuel Pool, which is located inside the primary containment adjacent to respective reactor cavity for a minimum of five years before being shifted to the AFR for long-term storage. The earliest date for the AFR facility for KKNPP units can receive the first lot of spent fuel assemblies will be on or after September 2020, it noted. The first unit of the KKNPP was commissioned on July 13, 2013, and the second unit on July 11, 2016.

“In any case, if a situation arises where the AFR is not available and the SPF inside the KKNPP units’ reactors building are full to their capacity as per AERB approved procedures/directives, further operations of the respective reactors of KKNPP unit 1 and 2 or both, would get automatically ceased,” it said.