Quick shutdown at Kaiga plant
KAIGA (Karnataka): On Saturday a nuclear power generating unit at the Kaiga plant in north Karnataka has been shut down following a fire alarm, said the Nuclear Power Corporation.
The smoke detection alarm at the third unit went off in the wee hours of Saturday but ‘on inspection it was found there was nothing abnormal,’ Kaiga Generating Station Director J.P. Gupta said in a statement.
The statement did not say whether there was a fire or merely the alarm had gone off.
He said, ‘As a precaution, the unit was shut down’.
The unit generates 220MWe and it was to be shut in May for routine checks, the statement said.
These checks would now be carried out since the unit has been shut and it would resume generation by April 17, teh Kaiga plant chief said.
The Kaiga station in Uttara Kannada district, about 500 km from Bangalore, has four units generating 220MWe power each.
After the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, India has ordered a safety review of all its 20 reactors.
