The Koodankulam Atomic Power Station is ready for operation.
This is built with Advanced Technology and safety standards with Russian Know how and the design is functioning well in many parts of the world including Scandinavian countries.
The project, being established at a cost of Rs.16,000 Crores near Tuticoriin,Tamil Nadu has been under construction/commission for the past 10 years.
Now suddenly out of the blue a group comes out stating that the plant is not safe, quoting Fukushima Disaster,which was triggered by Tsunami in Japan.
Koodankulam has been secured with adequate and possible precaution to ward off any calamity of the nature Fukushima.
However, the hazards associated with any Nuclear plant exists.
On this ground one can not object to a nuclear plant.
The argument by one Udaya Kumar, who seems to have sprung up suddenly, does not contain any information for his misgivings on the safety of the Koodankulam plant excepting a vague statement that the Plant will be hit by a tsunami and that people will be affected by Nuclear radiation.
He is unable to lay any specific problem excepting to raise the voice and rhetoric.
Tamil Nadu political parties without knowing what the whole issue is about are supporting him.
Especially Weeping Vaiko, is raising temperature without any fact at his disposal and is appealing to Tamil sentiment.
After the entry of Dr.Abdul Kalam who has inspected the facility and his measured analysis of the Safety at the Nuclear Plant, there seems to be some semblance of sanity among the mob crying for shut down of the plant.
Note that after the intercession by the Church to its parishioners to keep away from the controversy, the tone of the protesters has become measured.
Also worth noting is the fact that Koodankulam is Russian designed and not by US/France.
An Inter-Governmental Agreement on the project was signed on November 20, 1988 by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The project remained in limbo for 10 years due to political and economic upheaval in Russia after the post-1991 Soviet breakup, and also due to objections of the United States on the grounds that the agreement does not meet the 1992 terms of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
There are negotiations over the possible addition of a naval base at the site, both safeguarding the project and as a presence in the southern tip of the country. A small port became operational in Kudankulam on January 14, 2004. This port was established to receive barges carrying over sized light water reactor equipment from ships anchored at a distance of 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi). Until 2004 materials had to be brought in via road from the port ofTuticorin, risking damage during transportation.
In 2008 negotiation on building four additional reactors at the site began. Though the capacity of these reactors has not been declared, it is expected that the capacity of each reactor will be 1000 MW or 1 GW. The new reactors would bring the total capacity of the power plant to 9200 MW or 9.2 GW.
In June 2011, Sergei Ryzhov, the chief designer of the light water VVER nuclear reactors used at this Nuclear Power Plant was killed in an airplane accident. The plane belonging to the Rus-Air airlines was flying from Moscow to the Karelian capital Petrozavodsk.
Technical description
Two 1 GW reactors of the VVER-1000 model are being constructed by the Nuclear Power corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Atomstroyexport. When completed they will become the largest nuclear power generation complex in India producing a cumulative 2 GW of electric power. Both units are water cooled water moderated power reactors.[11] The first was scheduled to start operation in December 2009 and the second one was scheduled for March 2010. Currently, the official projections put unit 1 into operation in June 2011, and unit 2 will go in March 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koodankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant
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