The loading of 163 enriched uranium fuel bundles in the first unit of the two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project [KNPP] will happen around 11 Sep, said a senior official of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd [NPCIL] Friday.
‘We expect the fuel loading to happen around Sep 11. We are not working towards any specific date. Going the current situation, the first reactor will be fuelled by 15 Sep,’ S.A. Bhardwaj, director [Technical] at NPCIL said on phone from Mumbai.
India’s atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up the KNPP at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here, amid protests from the local villagers under the banner People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy [PMANE].
The PMANE leaders, who are currently at Idinthakarai neighbouring village to Kudankulam, have decided to intensify their protest further by taking out a procession Sep 9 to protest outside KNPP.
‘Ours is a non-violent protest. Though there is a prohibitory order against assembly of people near the plant we will gather and protest. We have not taken any anticipatory bail against our arrests,’ S.P. Udayakumar, coordinator of PMANE said.
Bhardwaj said the fuel loading process would take around one week and the observers from International Atomic Energy Agency may come at the start or at the end as KNPP reactors fall under the safeguard agreement that was signed with the former. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board [AERB] gave its nod to NPCIL to load the fuel and first approach to criticality 10 Aug.
‘We expect the fuel loading to happen around Sep 11. We are not working towards any specific date. Going the current situation, the first reactor will be fuelled by 15 Sep,’ S.A. Bhardwaj, director [Technical] at NPCIL said on phone from Mumbai.
India’s atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up the KNPP at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here, amid protests from the local villagers under the banner People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy [PMANE].
The PMANE leaders, who are currently at Idinthakarai neighbouring village to Kudankulam, have decided to intensify their protest further by taking out a procession Sep 9 to protest outside KNPP.
‘Ours is a non-violent protest. Though there is a prohibitory order against assembly of people near the plant we will gather and protest. We have not taken any anticipatory bail against our arrests,’ S.P. Udayakumar, coordinator of PMANE said.
Bhardwaj said the fuel loading process would take around one week and the observers from International Atomic Energy Agency may come at the start or at the end as KNPP reactors fall under the safeguard agreement that was signed with the former. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board [AERB] gave its nod to NPCIL to load the fuel and first approach to criticality 10 Aug.