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Government plans Rs 1.55 billion project to resuscitate KANUPP

By Ijaz Kakakhel

KARACHI/ISLAMABAD: The government has planned a project amounting to Rs 1.55 billion to keep the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) operational for the Plant Life Extension period and beyond, sources told Daily Times.

The proposal entitled ‘Long Term Operation of KANUPP’ would also help to extract the remaining useful service from the built-in conservative safety margins of the critical components at KANUPP and also help to identify the life limiting equipments and indigenize their designs, manufacturing, testing, qualification and commissioning due to aging or safety concerns.

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission) is sponsoring and executing the project that consists of two parts; the first costing Rs 50 million and the second Rs 1.504 billion. Initially, the amount of Rs 50 million envisaged under Part-I will be borrowed from the KANUPP budget and replenished as soon as the project is approved.

The scope of the project includes refurbishment or replacement of the aged system, structure and components like fuelling machines, steam generators, reactor fuel channel and nuclear instrumentation, along with the development, prototype manufacturing and testing of equipment qualification and their subsequent production on a limited scale.

The Energy Security Action Plan has envisaged increasing the share of nuclear power from 1 to 4.2 percent by installing 8,800MW nuclear power plants by 2030, as it was imperative to diversify the fuel mix in power generation due to the vulnerable international price. Currently, the dependence on fossil fuel for power generation is 34.3 percent gas and 32.1 percent oil.

Accordingly, a strategy has been developed to meet the growing demands of power through utilisation of other resources like hydel, coal, natural gas and nuclear power technology. The project was facilitating cheap power generation (cost per unit = Rs 5.02) as compared to thermal production and contributing positively in the country’s power crisis.

Facilities regarding office space, workshops, machinery, tools and expertise are already available as the 325 MW Chashma Nuclear Power Plant will complete by 2010-11, while KANUPP-II and KANUPP-III are in the feasibility stages. The projects namely CHASNUPP-3 and CHASNUPP-4 have also been approved.

The technical appraisal of the Planning Commission was of the view that the objective of the project was operation and maintenance of KANUPP and in this regard, sponsors may provide the existing tariff structure of power generation and also account for profit/loss. Sponsors may also explain why such research and development activities cannot be met out of their normal operations and maintenance costs.

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