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20th nuclear powerplant gets going
India now sixth country to have 20 or more nuke plants
Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service

Bangalore, November 27
Unit 4 of Kaiga Generating Station (KGS), the 20th nuclear power reactor of the country, achieved its first criticality today at 8.07 am. Criticality, in nuclear terms, signifies the start of self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction in the reactor core, which leads to the production of power.

“The unit will be synchronised with the southern grid after carrying out certain mandatory tests early next month. Electricity generated from this unit will be supplied to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry,” a spokesman of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the body that runs KGS and other nuclear power facilities in India, said.

Kaiga-4 is the NPCIL’s third nuclear power reactor, after Rajasthan Atomic Power Station unit 5 and unit 6, to have started operation during the current year, raising the nuclear installed capacity in the country from 4,560 MW to 4,780 MW.

With Kaiga’s fourth unit becoming operational, India is now elevated to the sixth rank in an elite club of nations, after USA, France, Japan, Russian Federation and Republic of Korea, to have twenty or more nuclear power reactors currently in operation.

KGS 4, like its predecessors, KGS 1, 2 and 3 that are in operation, is an indigenous pressurised heavy water reactor of 220 MW and is fuelled with uranium sourced from domestic mines.

The NPCIL is hoping that its installed nuclear power capacity on progressive completion of the reactors under construction will reach 7,280 MW in 2012 and 10,080 MW by 2017.

Currently, two light water reactors, each of 1,000 MW at Kudankulam nuclear power plant as well as a prototype fast breeder reactor of 500 MW at Kalpakkam, are at advanced stages of completion.