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Chennai: The Madras Atomic Power Station's nuclear power generating facilities are safe, and the unit which was shutdown when the tsunami hit will restart in a week's time, the Secretary in the Department of Atomic Energy and Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Anil Kakodkar, said today.
More than 60 people, five of them staffers, were killed when the tsunami flooded the residential colony.
Of them, 25 were relatives of the employees; the rest fishermen. The people have been relocated, and today they started returning to their houses.
One worker was killed at the construction site of the proposed Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor when the wave flooded the 17-metre pit where 150 workers were pouring concrete.
Their supervisor saw the sea break through a compound wall and warned them in time, Dr Kakodkar said.
He told reporters at Kalpakkam, 50 km south of Chennai, that the 220 MW second unit was shutdown when operators saw water rising in the sea water pump house. The operator shut down the plant with "just by a touch of a button," he said, referring to the emergency shut down procedure.
The other unit, a 170 MW unit, was not operating at that time as it was being refurbished.
Before the unit can be restarted, standard checks will have to be completed and experts from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board will have to inspect the facility, all of which could take less than a week, he said.
Allaying fears of damage to the power facility, Dr Kakodkar said that despite tsunamis being unprecedented, the safety features built into the design and systems were well equipped to handle such emergencies. There had still been some safety margin when the water level had risen, he said.
It was more common to take into account severe storms while designing and locating along the coastline.
But these were enough to handle the situation.
Similarly, for the reactor under construction, they had observed that the water level had not risen above the height at which the reactor is envisaged to come up.
"But they will not be complacent," he said.
The new experience would be taken into account.
"Now that the event has occurred, this will get factored in the design," he said.
Responding to a question on whether this would affect the timetable set for the reactor project, he said: "I don't think so."