CHENNAI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa jointly dedicated Unit 1 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant to the nation.
The event took place via video conference, where Modi was joined by his team, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Putin from Moscow and Jayalalithaa from the state secretariat in Chennai. Modi said, "Kudankulam 1 is an important addition to India's continuing efforts to scale up production of clean energy in India and it also signals our joint commitment to build pathways of partnership for green growth." He said five other units of 1,000 MW capacity each, would also be set up at Kudankulam.
The unit is a monument of friendship between India and Rusia, and attained criticality in July 2013. It, however, only began continuous power generation early this year. Jayalalithaa recalled the steps taken by the government to assure the local residents of the safety of the reactor. She also sought the commissioning of Unit 2 soon so as to meet the growing power demands.
First of its kind, the agreement to set up Voda Voda Energo Reactor (VVER) with 1,000 MW capacity was signed between former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. Since then the unit has been in the making to produce power and finally after so many years, the plant load factor has touched 90%, the highest since its commissioning in December 2014.
