Koodankulam unit I resumes after 6 months

“Unit-I is generating about 450 MW after resuming generation at 12.08 am on Saturday. The power generation will be increased gradually after the mandatory tests,” a senior NPCIL official said.

The 1000 MW Unit-I of the nuclear power plant has not been generating power since August last year except for a couple of days in November. The operation of the first unit was stopped on November 19 last year owing to high turbine vibration. The snag happened two days after the unit resumed generation following the mandatory annual maintenance that lasted for 108 days.

Power generation by the Koodankulam nuclear reactors has become unreliable in the last two years as one of the two generators remains under outage, a senior Tangedco official said. “Even Unit-II has been operating at 60 per cent of its capacity at around 600 MW due to vibration issues. NPCIL wanted to take out the Unit-II as well, but we wanted them to continue partial generation until Unit-I resumed operation. Now they might take out Unit-II for maintenance shutdown,” the official said, adding that there has been a steady decline in power generation in both the units in the last two years.

The official added that if the KKNPP’s unit had resumed operation in April, it would have helped the power utility to cut down on power purchase. “Now the wind power generation has picked up and we would be able to meet the power demand even without the KKNPP units till September,” the official said, adding that the nuclear power offers firm electricity supply, unlike the erratic renewable power sources.