Smoke alarm incident in Kaiga plant was not major: Director

The smoke detected in a nuclear power plant at Kaiga Generating Station was not a "major" one and a report would be submitted to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board on the incident, which led to shutting down of the reactor last week.

Kaiga: The smoke detected in a nuclear
power plant at Kaiga Generating Station was not a "major" one and a report would be submitted to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board on the incident, which led to shutting down of the
reactor last week, a top official said Monday.

"No inquiry is necessary. It was made out to be something
major, it is not. Yes, the smoke detection alarm went off
around 4.30 AM on April 8 following which the 220 MWe unit
III was shut down and AERB was informed about it immediately,"
Plant Director J P Gupta told reporters.

He also said the unit would resume generation by April
17.

"As it is normally done in case of any incident, minor or
major, we will submit a report to AERB in 20 days about the
detection of smoke in an inaccessible area, near the pump in
Unit 3 on April 8 due to which unit was shut down," he said.

The plant, Gupta said, had different committees including
the Sectional (depending on which section the incident
occurred) Root Cause Committee and the Station Root Cause
Committee, which will go into occurrence of smoke and will
submit a report to the Station Operation Review Committee.
"Whatever, recommendations are made by these committees
will be implemented and in case immediate action is required,
it will be taken and we will submit a report to AERB in 20
days," Gupta said.

He said it was already planned to shut off this unit next
month for carrying out routine surveillance tests, done once
in two years in the unit shut down state."In this case the
plant has gone in for surveillance little earlier than
scheduled. These tests will now be carried out since the unit
has been shut and it would resume generation by April 17," he
said.
The Kaiga plant, in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka,
has four units with a generation capacity of 220 MWe each.

At present Unit-1, 2 and 4 were operating safely and
generating about 560 MWe.

PTI

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