Version imprimableE A S Sarma
Former Secretary to the Government of India
To
Dr A K Mohanty
Chairman
Dept of Atomic Energy (DAE)
Govt of India
Dear Dr Mohanty,
I refer to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL)’s proposed (6 X 1100 MWe) LWR nuclear power project at Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh (AP). The US company, Westinghouse is expected to manufacture and supply its VVER units for the project.
In this connection, I invite your attention to a news report (https://www.ft.com/content/5d8e0c6c-59c9-4b40-806f-604889dd5fb6) which indicates that Westinghouse’s 1,100-megawatt Vogtle unit 3, which was initially supposed to be commissioned in 2016, has since come into operation now, after a delay of seven years. "Its start of operations was delayed once more in June after the company discovered a degraded seal in its main generator.....Along the way the company kept ratcheting up the cost estimates, pushing back the deadlines a bit at a time. Every time it was raised just enough where it was still within the bounds of justification that it made sense to proceed. But they were wildly off in their estimates every single time...The $14bn original cost of Vogtle units 3 and 4 has now ballooned to more than $30bn"
According to the above report, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis observed, "The
only reason there
