Dr. A Gopalakrishnan, the former Chairman of India\u2019s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, has raised some urgent issues that the government must address before commissioning Koodankulam.<\/i><\/p>\n
19 Apr 2013 – <\/i>The\u00a0 first of the two 1000 MWe\u00a0 VVER\u00a0 nuclear reactors\u00a0 at\u00a0 Koodankulam Project (KKNP-1), under\u00a0 commissioning and\u00a0 testing , is supplied\u00a0 by\u00a0 the\u00a0 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) .<\/p>\n
Crucial\u00a0materials and\u00a0reactor parts have been exported to KKNP-1 & 2\u00a0by\u00a0a\u00a0Russian government-owned company called\u00a0 Machine-Building Plant ZiO-Podolsk (ZiO) , which is another Rosatom subsidiary. ZiO-Podolsk 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\u00a0 important safety subsystems , equipment , components and materials supplied over the years to KKNP-1 & 2 .<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
From\u00a0 NPCIL\u2019s continuing inability to start-up\u00a0 KKNP-1\u00a0 till now , it is very obvious that the Indo-Russian commissioning team at Koodankulam is facing some serious problems which they never anticipated.<\/p>\n
The congenital lack of transparency from which the Prime Minister\u2019s Office (PMO) and the nuclear sector organisations are suffering always prevents the public from knowing the real story. The DAE Secretary\u2019s reasons for the delay in KKNP-1 start-up is\u00a0 that \u201c the engineers have opened up a few of the valves and such components for maintenance and it\u2019s taking some time.\u201d M.R Srinivasan, Member (AEC), is reported to have said, \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that a\u00a0 high-cost , high-risk\u00a0 nuclear reactor is facing defects and deficiencies in its components and equipment even before it is\u00a0 started up is highly unusual, and this\u00a0 indicates\u00a0 gross failures\u00a0 at several levels in the DAE-AERB-NPCIL-Atomstroyexport combine.<\/p>\n
If designs have been checked and followed , procurement of materials\u00a0 and fabrication have been done as per technical specifications, testing and quality control at the manufacturer\u2019s shops were comprehensive, and NPCIL\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 air heat exchanger \u2014\u00a0 vane system has not been integrally tested at the Russian manufaturer\u2019s works as required and problems were not sorted out there itself . There are other problems to list, but the above are typical of the\u00a0\u00a0 flaws holding up the reactor commissioning.\u00a0 Almost all these malfunctioning components and sub-systems have been produced by ZiO-Podolsk, and all of them are crucial to the safety of\u00a0 the plant, under beyond-design-basis accidents.<\/p>\n
The Bellona Foundation, an international environmental NGO based in Norway (http:\/\/www.bellona.org\/), stated\u00a0 (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.<\/p>\n
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, given the timeframe of work completed.<\/p>\n
Bulgaria has already asked Atomstroyexport and ZiO-Podolsk to provide details of materials used in their reactors, including quality certificates. Similarly , China\u2019s Tianwan plant has two VVER-1000 reactors, and the Chinese have raised several hundred queries regarding the low quality of materials and components.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cStopping and conducting full scale checks of reactors where equipment from ZiO-Podolsk has been installed is absolutely necessary,\u201d Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of Russian environmental NGO Ecodefence, said recently.\u201cOtherwise 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problems with ZiO-Podolsk supplies to the\u00a0 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. 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 \u201cthe selection of a company for supplying any equipment to NPCIL is not under the purview of AERB.\u201d For the same query, NPCIL says, \u201cNo information regarding any investigation against ZiO-Podolsk is available to NPCIL\u201d. Both these DAE organisations were lying in these replies, as is evident from the following facts.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 AP Joshi, Special Secretary, DAE\u00a0 having visited ZiO-Podolsk from July 15-18, 2012, just about five months after the arrest of Sergei Shutov, Zio-Podolsk\u2019s\u00a0 Procurement Director, for fraud and corruption in sending out inferior products to national and foreign reactor projects , including KKNP-1 & 2.<\/p>\n
The Indian Embassy in Moscow and the NPCIL \/ DAE personnel stationed there must\u00a0 have\u00a0 certainly known\u00a0 about\u00a0 Shutov\u2019s arrest , and\u00a0 the inherent serious implications of his actions on the safety of KKNP-1 & 2. They would have\u00a0 briefed the DAE Secretary\u00a0 about it immediately and through him the PMO would also have been alerted . And yet , both AERB and NPCIL pretend\u00a0 to take the ZiO-Podolsk matter very lightly and feign ignorance .<\/p>\n
One can only surmise that the PMO & the DAE quickly realied\u00a0 the gravity of the potentially explosive situation that could develop vis-a-vis Koodankulam reactor safety, following Shutov\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s top priority is to meet\u00a0 the PM\u2019s promise to President Putin that KKNP-1 will be started up in April 2013, and public safety and corruption come only after that .<\/p>\n
There could be a large number of equipment, components and materials of substandard quality from ZiO-Podolsk\u00a0 already installed in various parts of KKNP- 1 & 2\u00a0 whose deficiencies and\u00a0 defects are dormant today, but these very same shortcomings may cause such parts to catastrophically fail when the reactor is operated for some time .<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Under the circumstances , KKNP Unit-1 commissioning and\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And these investigations must be carried out by a team, where majority membership\u00a0 must\u00a0 not\u00a0 be\u00a0 from\u00a0 DAE , NPCIL and AERB, but include subject experts from other organisations in the country.<\/p>\n
India must also seriously consider inviting an IAEA expert team specially constituted to investigate the specific issues which this scandal has thrown up.<\/p>\n
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Gopalakrishnan is a former Chairman of India\u2019s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n