India’s first greenfield site for nuclear reactor in 14 years is set to become operational on Monday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lays the foundation for two 700-MW nuclear power plants at Gorakhpur in the Fatehabad district of Haryana.
“The two units are likely to produce commercial electricity by 2020-21 as it would take five to six years to complete the construction, which would begin in June 2015,” Nalinesh Nagaich, executive director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd, Mumbai, told Deccan Herald.
From the first date of construction, when concrete is first poured into an excavated site, it may take five and a half years for the first unit to be ready and another six months for the second unit. Over the next one and a half years, NPCIL may excavate and prepare the ground for actual construction.
Once the first two units were ready, there might be two additional units at Gorakhpur, taking the total capacity of the nuclear power plant to 2,800 MW. However, units III and IV have not yet been sanctioned.
After Kaiga in north Karnataka, where the first unit became operational in 2000, Gorakhpur was the first greenfield site where an indigenous nuclear reactor would be installed for power production. Two more greenfield sites were under preparation in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.