The New Indian Express: Chennai:
Tuesday, May 07, 2013.
Armed with
two RTI replies from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL),
anti-nuclear activists have once again raised the bogey of supply of shoddy
equipment and components to the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) by the
scam-tainted ZIO-Podolsk, a subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear energy corporation
ROSATOM.
The RTI query
was filed by the PMANE on March 7 requesting a list of equipment and components
supplied by ZIO-Podolsk directly or indirectly in the first and second units of
the KKNPP. In its reply on April 29, the NPCIL said that several equipment such
as “steam generators, cation and anion filters, mechanical Filter, moisture
separator and reheater, boric solution storage tanks, regenerative blow down
heat exchanger, pipelines and fittings of different systems, insulation
materials and PHRS Heat exchanger” were supplied by the Russian firm. Interestingly,
to a similar query filed by PMANE in January, NPCIL came out with an evasive
answer.
On January
28, PMANE pointed out in the query that “Zio-Podolsk, owned by the Russian
company Rosatom, is under investigation in Russia for shoddy equipment it produced
for several nuclear plants in that country and abroad since 2007. It is
suspected that Zio-Podolsk used wrong type of steel (cheaper than the one
originally required) to produce equipment for nuclear plants, such as steam
generators. This company is said to have supplied several equipment and parts
to the KKNPP”. The anti-Koodankulam protestors sought a “list of those
equipment and parts that have been supplied by Zio-Podolsk to the KKNPP units”.
PMANE
convenor S P Udayakumar told Express that the NPCIL’s reluctance to furnish the
list of equipment during the first query in January, when the ZIO-Podolsk scam
was not out in public domain, raises several questions. He said activists
suspect that there are possibilities of shoddy parts having been supplied by
ZIO-Podolsk and the KKNPP could have such parts installed in the units. In this
regard, the activists demanded an independent inquiry to be ordered to check
the quality of the equipment supplied to the Koodankulam plant by the Russian
firm.
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