Russia allotted Haripur as site for nuclear reactor park
19 Oct 2009
New Delhi: Russian state-owned nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, Atomstroyexport, has been awarded the contract to build India's first nuclear power station at Haripur in West Bengal. Senior officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd said that civil construction activities may be expected to commence by 2010.
Haripur is located in the East Midnapore district of West Bengal and atleast two 1,000 MW capacity reactors are expected to be built here. Construction, according to NPC officials is expected to be complete in five years. They also said that depending on site potential an additional two to four reactors may come up at Haripur.
The government's decision to allot Haripur to Russia has now been followed up with a decision to allot two sites to US companies -one in Gujarat and another in Andhra Pradesh.
French nuclear power major Areva has already been allotted the Jaitapur site in western Maharashtra where it will put up reactors of 1,600 MW capacity.
Atomstroyexport is already helping in the construction of two 1,000 MW reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, which are in advanced stages of construction.
NPC officials have said that they consider Haripur to be a good site because it met all technical criteria for selection and also because it had a relatively low population density.
India currently has 17 operating nuclear reactors with an installed capacity of a little over 4,100mw nuclear electricity, with six reactors under construction. These include the 500mw prototype fast breeder reactor.
NPC hopes to add 6,000 MW to 8,000 MW of installed nuclear electricity capacity through these four new sites between 2015 and 2016.
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