CHENNAI, January 13, 2014

 

T.S. Subramanian

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will lay the foundation stone on Monday for a nuclear power project near Gorakhpur village in Fatehbad district of Haryana.

The project will comprise two reactors of 700 MWe each. They are Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) that will use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as both coolant and moderator.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) will build these reactors. This is the first time Haryana will have a nuclear project.

In the second stage, the NPCIL will build two more PHWRS of 700 MWe each at the Gorakhpur site.

The first pour of the concrete for the first two reactors will take place in June 2015 . As per present plans, the first unit will be commissioned 63 months from now and the second unit six months later. About 534 hectares for the entire project and 75 hectares for residential quarters for the NPCIL employees have been acquired around Gorakhpur.

Informed sources said the Cabinet has given “in-principle” approval for building the third and fourth PHWRS of 700 MWe each at the site.

The NPCIL is already building four PHWRS of 700 MWe each, two units each at Kakrapara in Gujarat and Rawatbhatta in Rajasthan. The units at Kakrapara are under advanced stage of construction and they will reach criticality in 2016.

The NPCIL will also build 700 MWe reactors that will use natural uranium as fuel at Chutka and Bhimpur in Madhya Pradesh, Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan and Kaiga in Karnataka.

The NPCIL had notched up a capacity factor of more than 80 per cent in its operating units across the country in both the financial years 2012-13 and 2013-2014, the sources said.

 

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