One of the two 220 MWe units at the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station (KAPS) in Gujarat had to be shut down at 9 am on Friday (March 11, 2016) after leakage of heavy water from its coolant system. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has sent a team of experts for an independent assessment of the situation. The KAPS, located on the border of Surat and Tapi districts near Vyara town of Tapi, is run by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). According to KAPS website, the power station has two generation units of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) that were commissioned during early 90s.

An expert from the nuclear regulator is learnt to have reported that the leakage was restricted to the Primary Heat Transport (PHT) system of Unit 1 of the station in Vyara district, and that the “safety system of the reactor had worked as intended, including the backup cooling systems”.

Did You Know?

• For AERB, though, the worries could be compounded by the fact that this latest incident of a leak at KAPS, which has two indigenous PHWR units commissioned in the ‘90s, follows another recent leak at the 1,000-MWe Unit-1 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP).
• The KNPP, the country’s first nuclear reactor unit built with Russian assistance, is learnt to have been briefly shut down to attend to a leak noticed in the conventional system of the station recently.
• Prior to these two incidents, the only documented instance of a leak was four years ago, when there were two instances of tritium uptake (or exposure) of workers at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station at Rawatbhata during maintenance work.