The former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board in India, A Gopalakrishnan, said troubles with the Russian-designed Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant are the result of a effort to create a “make-in-India” plant with technology that was unfamiliar to Indian engineers.
Kudankulam's Unit 1 reached criticality on 21 January and was back to sending electricity to the grid as of 30 January, running at a 300 MW pace after a seven-month maintenance shut down, during which components were borrowed from the plant's Unit 2, according to Indian media.
The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd., (NPCIL), said output would be boosted after components were checked at less than a third of full power. “The first (1000 MW) has begun production by 8 a.m. today. We have started generating about 300 MW and production will be stepped up in a phased manner in keeping with the norms,” said the power plant's project director RS Sundar.
The plant, however, has had a fitful start. The first unit first reached criticality in July 2013. It was connected to the grid October 2013, but then took more than a year, until Dec. 31, 2014, for commercial power generation to begin. In short order, problems developed. It was shut down in June 2015 for a 60 day outage, but missed several deadlines for a restart. The outage was prolonged for seven months.
Former regulatory chairman Gopalakrishnan said that Indian engineers have had long-term success with Canadian-designed reactors primarily due to the quality of India's relationship with Canada.
“We had a relationship with Canada – they kept 150 engineers of ours for almost three years in Canada, telling us about their computer codes, how they are analyzing, etc.,” Gopalakrishnan said. “We leared through tutorials and then we installed 20-odd reactors [of Canadian design],” he said in an interview with the Times of India.
Gopalakrishnan said that Russians are Canadians shared one trait: “They are not cut-and-flee type of people,” he said, casting the blame on India's self-imposed mandate of going it alone. “We wanted to show we could do it mostly on our own and keep costs down. That was the problem. We didn't make-in-India in Kundankulam at that time,” he said. “But the approach was the same.”
“Many Indian components have been used in Kudankulam. Right from beginning, we were looking for cost reduction. We have built 22 PHWRs, so NPCIL said we will erect and commission the [VVER] reactor. We had Russians as consultants but they were rarely used. Just to give an example, in some of the electrical wiring, Indian contractors laid it as per Canadian standards thinking, well, a reactor is a reactor. But when the Russian drawings came it was very different. And when they started up, they found electromagnetic interference. Our quality control on materials wasn’t very good either,” he said.
Russian nuclear power plants have had more success in China, he said, noting, the construction process there used “the concept of a reference plant.”
“The Russians took 100 percent responsibility — brought their own equipment , selected Chinese engineers who were working there, but the Russians had complete control over them. All liability was initially with Russians. And after two or three years of satisfactory operation, as Russian reactors, they became Chinese plants.”
“That's the way to go about it, especially in new technology,” he said.