[Reproduced below are two (recent) news reports, at sl.no. I & 2, and a (somewhat older) detailed analytical article highlighting some of the problems and likely hazards, at sl. no. III.
At sl.no. I, a vendor's representative, being tagged as an "expert", is describing the current problem as "minor." That a representative of the vendor will try to categorise any and every problem, linked to the vendor, as "minor", till it blows up in the face, is hardly any news. What, however, is of interest is that the "expert" repeatedly refers to the "pre-commissioning" operation - which is long over, as if such operation is anything extraordinary. Of cardinal relevance is, however, the following: "The unit was shut down for maintenance in July this year and was restarted in September. "The Kudankulam builders - ***Russia's nuclear energy corporation Rosatom - said in a statement Wednesday that the unit shutdown Sep 26 followed certain deviations found in the "turbo-arlernator", and it will resume operations by December***." [Emphasis added.] Two things need be noted. One, even if the turbine has a different manufacturer (understandably the Power Macines: <http://www.netzwerkit.de/Members/MaxMoritz/news20130412-001> ), it is the Rosatom, the main vendor for the nuclear reactor (see: <http://www.power-technology.com/projects/kudankulam-nuclear-power-plant/>), which is responsible. Two, after a month of shutdown, the vendor, in the month of October, is reassuring that it's only a "minor" problem and will "resume operations by December!" The analytical article, by one who is very well supposed to know what he is talking of, clearly shows that the plant is beset with technical issues from the very word "go". (Mark the emphasised portions, in particular.) The construction of the Reactor I had commenced back in March 31 2002. (Source: <http://globalenergyobservatory.org/geoid/44876>.) Supply of sub-standard equipments and parts, by the sub-vendor ZiO-Podolsk in particular, has always been a major issue. Poor quality control appears to be a serious malaise.] I/III. http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/minor-problem-stalls-kudankulam-no-safety-issues-expert-114102200888_1.html Minor problem stalls Kudankulam, no safety issues: Expert IANS | New Delhi October 22, 2014 Last Updated at 20:02 IST The first unit of the Russian built Kudankulam nuclear plant, which stopped operations late last month after a minor malfunction in the unit's turbine, will resume operations soon, a Russian expert said Wednesday. Commenting on an earlier IANS report, Alexander Uvarov of the Moscow-based nuclear think tank Atominfo said the first unit was shut down as per procedure during the pre-commissioning stage after some minor problems were detected in the turbine. "In the course of tests conducted during the pre-commissioning stage some minor malfunctions of the turbine were seen. However all safety systems activated reliably, the malfunction was diagnosed promptly and repairs are being carried out," Uvarov told IANS over the phone. "The pre-commissioning tests stage is purposed exactly to observe such malfunctions. There are no danger or risks for population, environment or sea," he added. The unit was shut down for maintenance in July this year and was restarted in September. The Kudankulam builders - Russia's nuclear energy corporation Rosatom - said in a statement Wednesday that the unit shutdown Sep 26 followed certain deviations found in the "turbo-arlernator", and it will resume operations by December. "During operating period on Sep 26, the first power unit of Kudankulam NPP faced 830 MW inclination of certain operating figures of the turbo-alternator. The power unit will resume operation by this December," Rosatom said. The KNPP, located in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, is India's first pressurised water reactor belonging to the light water reactor category. The first unit attained criticality July 2013, which is the beginning of the fission process. The unit has started power generation and has been connected to the southern grid. (Biswajit Choudhury can be reached at [email protected]) II/III. http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/unit-1-of-kudankulam-power-plant-shut-down-for-6-to-8-weeks-609553 Unit 1 of Kudankulam Power Plant Shut Down for 6 to 8 Weeks South | Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: October 20, 2014 22:34 IST Unit 1 of Kudankulam Power Plant Shut Down for 6 to 8 Weeks Chennai: A major problem in the first atomic power unit's turbine at Kudankulam has put the unit out of action for around six-eight weeks, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) said on Monday. "The unit has been shut down to inspect turbine and its associated components before putting it for commercial operation. Maintenance activities are in progress before the Unit is expected to be back in service, some components of turbine needs replacement,for which action has been initiated," RS Sundar, site director, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, said in a statement. According to him, the first unit is expected to be back in service by six-to-eight weeks time. "The turbine of the first unit has developed some problem. It seems some component inside the turbine turned loose and damaged the turbine blades," the source told IANS preferring anonymity. According to him, discussions are on with the experts on whether to replace the faulty equipment from the turbine of the second unit so that the first unit could be run at the earliest. The first unit stopped operations on September 26 due to turbine problem. The unit was shut down for maintenance in July this year and was restarted in September. However, senior officials of NPCIL were not available for clarifications on how the components would be replaced importing from Russia or taking them out of the second unit's turbine. Speaking to IANS, G Sundarrajan, an anti-nulcear power activist who has filed a case against KNPP in the Supreme Court questioning the safety, said, "Even before starting its commercial operations the world class third generation plant is on the blink." Atomic power plant operator NPCIL is setting up two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, 650 km from Chennai. The total outlay for the project is over Rs.17,000 crore. The KNPP is India's first pressurised water reactor belonging to the light water reactor category. The first unit attained criticality on July 2013, which is the beginning of the fission process. The unit has started power generation and has been connected to the southern grid. Work on commissioning the second unit is in progress. The unit is expected to start the fission process next month. Story First Published: October 20, 2014 16:29 IST III. http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Resolve-Koodankulam-issues/2013/04/19/article1551164.ece Resolve Koodankulam issues By A Gopalakrishnan Published: 19th April 2013 07:36 AM Last Updated: 19th April 2013 07:36 AM The first of the two 1000 MWe VVER nuclear reactors at Koodankulam Project (KKNP-1), under commissioning and testing , is supplied by the Russian atomic energy corporation, Rosatom ,through its subsidiary, Atomstroyexport. On the Indian side , the KKNP project is owned by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) , a public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) . The overall safety regulation responsibility is with the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) . Crucial materials and reactor parts have been exported to KKNP-1 & 2 by a Russian government-owned company called Machine-Building Plant ZiO-Podolsk (ZiO) , which is another Rosatom subsidiary. ***ZiO-Podolsk*** (emphasis added) supplies have been sent for years to all the Russian nuclear power plants, and to most of the VVER plants exported to countries like India, Iran, China and Bulgaria. These include important safety subsystems , equipment , components and materials supplied over the years to KKNP-1 & 2 . ***KKNP-1 was originally scheduled to start operation in early 2010 , but presently even the final start-up testing is not completed . In January 2013 , the Secretary, DAE, stated that he was totally certain that the reactor would be started that month itself, but it did not happen.*** [Emphasis added.] ***From NPCIL's continuing inability to start-up KKNP-1 till now , it is very obvious that the Indo-Russian commissioning team at Koodankulam is facing some serious problems which they never anticipated.*** [Emphasis added.] The congenital lack of transparency from which the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the nuclear sector organisations are suffering always prevents the public from knowing the real story. ***The DAE Secretary's reasons for the delay in KKNP-1 start-up is that " the engineers have opened up a few of the valves and such components for maintenance and it's taking some time." M.R Srinivasan, Member (AEC), is reported to have said, "We sought an additional safety mechanism , which consists of valves. The original reactor design had to be altered and I believe this is the basic cause for delay . The valves were designed partially in India and Russia and compatibility with the reactor led to some hiccups."*** [Emphasis added.] ***The fact that a high-cost , high-risk nuclear reactor is facing defects and deficiencies in its components and equipment even before it is started up is highly unusual, and this indicates gross failures at several levels in the DAE-AERB-NPCIL-Atomstroyexport combine.*** [Emphasis added.] ***If designs have been checked and followed , procurement of materials and fabrication have been done as per technical specifications, testing and quality control at the manufacturer's shops were comprehensive, and NPCIL's Quality Assurance (QA) before acceptance of supplies at site were strictly as per nuclear norms, these problems could not have arisen at the commissioning stage.*** [Emphasis added.] If news trickling out of KKNP-1 site is to be trusted, ***the Russian special check valves in the passive long-term core flooding system (hydroaccumulator system- stage 2) are defective as received and, at this late hour an order to manufacture one or more such valves has been placed on a reputed Hyderabad company. One or more of the new Russian valves show cracks even at the finish of initial commissioning tests. Similarly, the passive heat removal system (PHRS) is not functioning as per specifications, because the damper -- air heat exchanger -- vane system has not been integrally tested at the Russian manufaturer's works as required and problems were not sorted out there itself.*** [Emphasis added.] There are other problems to list, but the above are typical of the flaws holding up the reactor commissioning. ***Almost all these malfunctioning components and sub-systems have been produced by ZiO-Podolsk*** (emphasis added), and all of them are crucial to the safety of the plant, under beyond-design-basis accidents. The Bellona Foundation, an international environmental NGO based in Norway (http://www.bellona.org/), stated (http://www.anti-atom.ru/en/node/3468 ) in February 2012 that ***the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had arrested Sergei Shutov, the procurement director of ZiO-Podolsk, on charges of corruption and fraud. The FSB has charged Shutov with buying low-quality raw materials on the cheap over the years, passing them off as high-quality materials, and pocketing the difference***. [Emphasis added.] It is not clear how many reactors have been impacted by this alleged crime, but ***reactors built by Russia in India, Bulgaria, Iran and China are among those suspected to have received sub-standard equipment and components*** (emphasis added), given the timeframe of work completed. Bulgaria has already asked Atomstroyexport and ZiO-Podolsk to provide details of materials used in their reactors, including quality certificates. Similarly , China's Tianwan plant has two VVER-1000 reactors, and the Chinese have raised several hundred queries regarding the low quality of materials and components. ***Investigative Journalists, an NGO based in the Armenian capital, has said (http://hetq.am/eng/news/11194/russian-prosecutors-arrest-state-nuclear-official.html ) that the use of substandard materials could lead to a nuclear disaster. "Stopping and conducting full scale checks of reactors where equipment from ZiO-Podolsk has been installed is absolutely necessary," Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of Russian environmental NGO Ecodefence, said recently."Otherwise the risk of a serious accident at a nuclear power plant, whose clean-up bill, stretching into the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars, will have to be footed by taxpayers."*** [Emphasis added.] ***The problems with ZiO-Podolsk supplies to the KKNP-1 Project, seen in the context of the widespread allegations of corruption and poor quality, indicate that the root cause of KKNP-1 problems lies in those sub-standard supplies*** (emphasis added). Recent questions raised under RTI to the AERB and NPCIL resulted only in evasive and pointless replies. Asked about parts supplied by ZiO, AERB says "the selection of a company for supplying any equipment to NPCIL is not under the purview of AERB." For the same query, NPCIL says, "No information regarding any investigation against ZiO-Podolsk is available to NPCIL". Both these DAE organisations were lying in these replies, as is evident from the following facts. The website of the Russian Embassy in India carries the news of a senior Indian delegation (http://www.rusembassy.in/index.php?option=com_content&view= article&id=4881%3A-q-q&catid=10%3A2010-01-21-11-06-46&lang=ru ) headed by AP Joshi, Special Secretary, DAE having visited ZiO-Podolsk from July 15-18, 2012, just about five months after the arrest of Sergei Shutov, Zio-Podolsk's Procurement Director, for fraud and corruption in sending out inferior products to national and foreign reactor projects , including KKNP-1 & 2. The Indian Embassy in Moscow and the NPCIL / DAE personnel stationed there must have certainly known about Shutov's arrest , and the inherent serious implications of his actions on the safety of KKNP-1 & 2. They would have briefed the DAE Secretary about it immediately and through him the PMO would also have been alerted . And yet , both AERB and NPCIL pretend to take the ZiO-Podolsk matter very lightly and feign ignorance . ***One can only surmise that the PMO & the DAE quickly realied the gravity of the potentially explosive situation that could develop vis-a-vis Koodankulam reactor safety, following Shutov's arrest, because by then several crucial equipment, components and materials with alleged poor quality and deficiencies have been already installed in various parts of both units at KKNP and Unit-1 was on its way to commissioning. The PMO & DAE seem to have decided to weather the storm through the joint execution of an Indo-Russian cover-up plan, and hold a firm position that all is well with KKNP supplies.*** [Emphasis added.] After a fire-fighting strategy was framed in India , it would appear that the PMO despatched the Special Secretary, DAE, and his team to visit ZiO-Podolsk and spent three days to firm up the modus operandi of tackling the rather tricky situation which could develop in India once the protesters and the courts of law come to know of the scam details. After all , the PMO's top priority is to meet the PM's promise to President Putin that KKNP-1 will be started up in April 2013, and public safety and corruption come only after that . There could be a large number of equipment, components and materials of substandard quality from ZiO-Podolsk already installed in various parts of KKNP- 1 & 2 whose deficiencies and defects are dormant today, but these very same shortcomings may cause such parts to catastrophically fail when the reactor is operated for some time . Many such parts and materials may have been installed within the reactor pressure vessel itself, which is now closed and sealed in preparation for the start-up. Once the reactor is made critical and reaches power operation, much of these components and materials inside will become radioactive and/or will be in environments where they cannot be properly tested for quality or performance. Under the circumstances , KKNP Unit-1 commissioning and KKNP-2 construction work must be stopped forthwith, and there can be no question of resuming these works towards start-up of both these reactors until a thorough and impartial investigation is carried out into the impact of this corruption scandal and sub-standard supplies on the safety of these reactors. And these investigations must be carried out by a team, where majority membership must not be from DAE , NPCIL and AERB, but include subject experts from other organisations in the country. India must also seriously consider inviting an IAEA expert team specially constituted to investigate the specific issues which this scandal has thrown up. ***Gopalakrishnan is a former Chairman of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board*** [Emphasis added.] -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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