Govt. to examine if Centre proposes one more nuclear power plant.

After a days deliberations, Karnataka has adopted an official stand that it would 'examine' the issue if the Centre comes up with a concrete proposal to set up one more nuclear power station in the State.

According to sources in the government, the stand was taken recently after a meeting with representatives of the departments concerned in Bengaluru.

What prompted the government to deliberate on the issue was the confusion triggered by a news agency report from New Delhi stating that Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh had shown interest in giving sites for setting up Russian nuclear power reactors after protests made it impossible to have these plants at the initially allocated site of Haripur in West Bengal.

It triggered inter-departmental consultations as enquiries showed that no department had officially taken up the issue with the Centre. However, the land for locating the proposed plant is yet to be identified.

Karnataka has a nuclear power station at the picturesque Kaiga in Uttara Kannada district, near the Kali. This station has four generating units with a capacity of 220 MW each. While the first two units were set up in 2000, the third began generation from 2007. The fourth one was set up on January 20, 2011. Plans are afoot to expand Kaiga generating station by setting up two more generating stations with the capacity of 220 MW each.


THE HINDU