TIRUNELVELI: The KKNPP administration arranged a special site tour of Reactor unit 1 on Saturday for scribes. Before the tour, a power-point presentation about the safety features was given to the jounos at the Conference Hall in the plant.First, the journalists were taken to the diesel generator (DG) building. Each diesel generator has the capacity to produce 6.3 MV. If power supply was cut off for some reason from these transmission lines, the diesel (DG) generators would start automatically. Of the 4 DGs, one DG was enough for providing power to take care of the safety system of the reactor.If the DG fails, passive heat removal system would automatically work by using natural air. In the event of any hypothetical threat of core melting, the same design would be automatically connected to the core catcher, they added. A total of 153 fuel assemblies would be put inside the core assembly, one third of which would be replaced every year. The spent fuel would be put in the adjacent spent fuel pool, which is inside the reactor. The fuel pool has the capacity to store the spent fuel for 8 years. The officials explained that since multiple barriers are provided to prevent any leakage of radiation, an incident similar to the Fukushima accident cannot happen here. The control room of the reactor is being monitored and handled only by Indian engineers.Meanwhile, the plant authorities are hopeful that the plant will attain criticality by March 2012, “if everything goes well.” KKNPP Site Director M Kasinath Balaji at a press meet at Koodankulam Plant, said that there was no threat to the Koodankulam plant. “Now, no one prevented us from coming to the plant. Since the district administration is taking care of the L&O situation, we are awaiting the Collector’s clearance for the return of employees to work. At present, only a small crew comprising around 80 to 90 are involved in monitoring work,” he said, adding that no maintenance was being carried out at the plant.
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