Visakhapatnam: In a significant development, a high-powered committee of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) cleared the Kovvada site in Srikakulam as suitable for the setting up of the state’s first 9,540 MW nuclear plant.
The committee reviewed the seismotectonic study that it had commissioned the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) to carry out to find out if the proposed site at Kovvada fell under a seismically vulnerable zone. “NGRI hired the services of the Survey of India to conduct these seismic studies,” NPCIL chief engineer and Kovvada Nuclear Park (KNP) project director G.V. Ramesh told Deccan Chronicle.
According to the study, the site falls under Seismic Zone II, which is safe for the setting up of a nuke plant, with no fault lines in its 5-km radius. NGRI conducted various studies in and around Kovvada for almost a year. NPCIL had also sent three of the six volumes of its various survey reports to the Atomic Energy Regul-atory Board (AERB) for its final approval.
“After the NGRI submitted its report, the NPCIL committee analysed it and cleared the site,” he added.
NPCIL recently submitted new Terms of Reference (ToR) to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) as per the increase in the rating of the reactor and got its go-ahead to take up a new Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), which was necessary as there was an increase in the capacity of the plant. When the EIU is submitted, NPCIL will conduct the environmental public hearing. Delays in the submission of the EIA report to the MoEF will, in turn, delay the holding of the public hearing by NPCIL. As per the earlier original schedule, the hearing was supposed to have been held in the middle of 2013.
It was also a few months ago that the NPCIL authorities sent the KNP proposal to the Atomic Energy Commission of India and is expecting the necessary approvals any time now.
