Construction of 3rd plant at Kudankulam to begin by year end

India will begin construction of a third nuclear power plant, in collaboration with Russia, at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu by this year end, a top executive of the state-run Nuclear Power Corporation said here today.

The third unit at Kudankulam could be of a higher 1,200 MW capacity against the 1,000 MW each of unit I & II as scientists are evaluating a new reactor developed by Russia.

"We expect to start construction on Kudankulam III by end of this year or early 2010," Sudhinder Thakur, Executive Director (Corporate Planning), Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) told reporters here.

Thakur said NPCIL will receive the techno-commercial proposal for Kudankulam III by middle of this year.

The agreement to build four more reactors at Kudankulam was signed during a recent visit of Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar to Russia.

Unit I and II at Kudankulam are at an "advanced stage" of completion and are expected to be commissioned this year.

Russia is building two 1,000 VVER reactors for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant and during President Dmitry Medvedev's New Delhi visit in December last year, the two countries agreed to build four more units.

Another official involved with the Kudankulam project said that NPCIL was evaluating a new design of VVER-type reactors of 1,200 MW capacity.