The unit 1 at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant located in the Tirunelveli district, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has reached ‘critical’ condition on Saturday 13 July.
The nuclear plant is all set to be commissioned before August-end. In a nuclear reactor, when the neutrons that are lost during the fission process are reproduced in equal numbers then the condition is called ‘critical’.
If the produced number of neutrons exceed the number of neutrons lost, then the power level is called ‘supercritical’, while the condition where the number of neutrons lost are more than the neutrons produced then it is referred to as ‘subcritical’, indicating decreasing power.
India Atomic Energy Commission chairman SK Sinha said, “first phase of power generation in Unit-I is systematically proceeding.”
The 1,000MW nuclear plant is expected to start producing power for consumption in about 40 days.
During the first stage of power production, the plant has been planned to generate only 50% of its capacity and slowly increase it to 70%, 90% and finally to 100% production rate.