Kudankulam Unit II to go critical on Monday

CHENNAI: Unit II of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was scheduled to criticality by Monday night and reconnected to the southern grid by Tuesday evening. Unit II which attained criticality on July 12 was connected to the grid for the first time on August 28. After this, it was shut for tests.Unit II is likely to reach full capacity of 1000MW by January when Unit I will be shut down for annual maintenance.
“We have approval from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) for Unit II to attain criticality and we are working on it.By Monday night, the unit is expected to attain criticality and it will start generating power,“ said site director R S Sundar.
Once the power generation increases it will be connected to the grid. “We are expecting to connect to the grid by Tuesday evening and from that the generation will keep increasing and by January the unit will hit the full capacity of 1000MW,“ said Sundar.
Unit I of the plant is expected to be shut down for annual maintenance mostly by the end of December by which time Unit II is likely to be substituting Unit I with the power generation, he said.