'NPCIL Loses Around Rs.8 Crore Daily from Kudankulam Plant Outage'

Chennai, Jan 16 (IANS) India's atomic power plant operator, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is suffering a revenue loss of around Rs.8 crore per day due to outage of the unit at Kudankulam, said an anti-nuclear activist here Friday.

According to Power System Operation Corporation Ltd, the first unit at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) is expected to restart generation Saturday after the reactor and turbine of the first 1,000 MW unit tripped Jan 14 evening.

In a statement issued earlier NPCIL had said 1,000 MW per day equals 2.4 crore units.

However, G.Sundarrajan, who had filed a case against the project in the apex court, countered the figure.

"Ever since the first unit at KNPP started commercial generation Dec 31, 2014 it has been producing around 940 MW per day or around 2.25crore units per day," Sundarrajan told IANS.

He said the actual per unit commercial tariff for the first unit is still unclear with different officials giving out different figures ranging from Rs.3.50 per unit to Rs.4 per unit.

"Even at Rs.3.50 per unit, NPCIL is suffering a revenue loss of around Rs.7.89 crore per day of plant outage," Sundarrajan said.

"The so called third generation atomic power plant seems to have a mind. It seems the unit shuts down and restarts automatically," he said.

Curiously NPCIL still classifies the unit as under construction in its website and not under the head `plants under operation'.

Despite several attempts, NPCIL officials were not available for clarifications.