Parliament Question: Nuclear Power Projects

The year-wise details of the funds sanctioned, released and utilized for each project under construction during the last five years are attached as Annexure.

The major reasons for delay in construction/ commissioning of projects in the recent past have been due to extensive design changes following the Fukushima incident in Japan, delay in supply of critical equipment, Covid-19 pandemic & related issues, delay in supplies from Russian Federation (for KKNPP), delay in execution of works by contractors at site on account of financial crunch / cash flow problems post Covid, difficult site soil conditions (at GHAVP), shortage of skilled contractor manpower, and the impact due to ongoing Russia-Ukraine and USA/ Israel-Iran geopolitical conflict.

To address the challenges, various measures are being implemented to ensure timely completion of the projects. The measures include, periodic project reviews at multiple levels in NPCIL & DAE, constant monitoring of progress of project activities, timely identification of constraints & making necessary mid-course corrections, frequent meetings with vendors/ contractors to resolve various issues and re-sequencing of construction activities to the extent possible, higher delegation of powers to various executives of NPCIL and constitution of Board sub-committee for monitoring of projects. In addition to this, bulk ordering of long delivery equipment has been adopted and many equipment are under manufacturing/ progressive delivery for various reactors being implemented in fleet mode to ensure timely supply of long lead items for the projects.

Upon progressive commissioning of the projects currently under construction, a cumulative capacity of 8000 MW would be added to the national grid.