No money for India's N-power programme

The country's nuclear power generation programme has slowed down because of lack of funds.

Despite the availability of indigenous technology, only 10 per cent of the expected target of 10,000 megawatts is expected to be achieved by 2000, says Nuclear Power Corporation Managing Director Y S R Prasad.

Dr Prasad said the NPC's nine units generate about 1,700 MW electricity and only an additional 1,080 MW will be added by the end of 1998-99.

Rs 500 billion, he said, is required at current construction costs of Rs 40 million per MW to complete all of the NPC's proposed atomic power plants to generate an additional 8,000 MW of electricity. Against this, the NPC has received just Rs 10 billion assistance from the Centre during the eighth five-year plan, he said.

With that kind of money the NPC could start only start work on one of the proposed projects, he said, adding that Tarapur unit four would get priority. Two new units -- unit three and four of 500 MW capacity each - have already got necessary approvals.

The other proposed projects include two additional units of 500 MW each at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (unit five and six), three units of 220 MW each at Kaiga in Karnataka, two units of 500 MW each at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra and two units again of 500 MW each at Nagarjunasagar in Andhra Pradesh.

Dr Prasad said the work on RAPS unit three and four, with capacities of 220 MW each, is expected to be complete by next year. Proposed units five and six will be taken up after the Tarapur expansion, he said. Units one and two at the new Kaiga atomic power plant in Karnataka will be commissioned around the end of 1998, around which time the upgraded RAPS unit two would be in place to supply another 200 MW, bringing the total electricity available to 1080 MW at that time.

The NPC has been seeking more funds under the upcoming ninth five-year plan to complete pending projects. The corporation will also be asking the Centre to help it go for long-term borrowing, he said, pointing out that short-term borrowings were unviable for capital-intensive projects since profits only came in after the five to six years it took to complete a project.

Nuclear plants, he claimed, were the cheapest and environmentally safest sources of power, though the installation costs were higher. But it was one-time expenditure and, unlike conventional thermal and oil-based power stations, other fuels were not required to run the plant, he added.

There are better chances of an agreement being signed with Russia for supply of two reactors of 1,000 MW capacity since the United Front is still in power at the Centre. The reactors are for the proposed Kudankulam atomic power station in Tamil Nadu

An Indian team, including officials from the Department of Atomic Energy and the NPC, will soon leave for Russia to finalise the agreement between the two countries. Prasad said the Russian VVR reactors had been found safe by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Most reactors in the world are pressurised water reactors like the VVR.

After signing the agreement for the two Russian reactors, the two sides still have to sign a commercial agreement before the Russians handed over the project design. It would take two more years before work actually began on the plants, somewhere after 2000, he said. Russia would give the NPC a 60 per cent long-term loan at a concessional rate for the Rs 3.1 billion project.