Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant

Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is the single largest nuclear power station in India, situated in Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Construction on the plant began on 31 March 2002, but faced several delays due to opposition from local fishermen. KKNPP is scheduled to have six VVER-1000 reactors built in collaboration with Atomstroyexport, the Russian state company and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, with an installed capacity of 6,000 MW of electricity.Unit 1 was synchronised with the southern power grid on 22 October 2013 and since then, has been generating electricity at its warranted limit of 1,000 MW. The original cost of the two units was 13,171 crore, but it was later revised to 17,270 crore . Russia advanced a credit of 6,416 crore for both the units. Unit 2 attained criticality on 10 July 2016 and was synchronised with the electricity grid on 29 August.In 2015, Nuclear Power Corporation Ltd announced a price of 4.29/kW·h for energy delivered from Kudankulam nuclear power plant.The ground-breaking ceremony for construction of units 3 & 4 was performed on 17 February 2016. Due to operators and suppliers requirement to insure the next two units at, the cost of units 3 & 4 amounted to twice the cost of units 1 & 2.HistoryBackgroundAn Inter-Governmental Agreement on the project was signed on 20 November 1988 by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev, for the construction of two reactors. The project remained in limbo for a decade due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There were also objections from the United States, on the grounds that the agreement did not meet the 1992 terms of the Nuclear Suppliers Group . M R Srinivasan, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman from 1987 to 1990, called the project "a non-starter". However, the project was revived on 21 June 1998.