As Left allies mount pressure on the UPA government to press pause on the Indo-US nuclear deal, time is also running out on another front: there’s a crisis situation in the country’s nuclear establishment with fuel for nuclear power plants running low and experts cautioning that if this continues for another year or two, there’s a real danger of some units even having to shut down power generation.

The fuel shortage situation has started telling on the performance of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). Currently operating nuclear power stations with a capacity of around 4,000 MWe, it has been forced to slash power production levels.

• The overall plant load factor (PLF) has come down from a high of 80-90 per cent to around 60 per cent in some three years — a drop of 30 per cent when there’s power shortage in the country.

• Despite commissioning new reactors for power generation, income from sale of power has remained stagnant at around Rs 3,000 crore for the past three years — NPCIL calls it “mismatch” in demand and supply of fuel.

• NPCIL Chairman-cum-Managing Director S K Jain says the fuel shortage-led fall in PLF has already resulted in a loss of Rs 800 crore potential revenue.

While NPCIL officials do not openly admit that there could be closure of units in case supplies of uranium are not augmented, they do say that the current situation is “very bad”. A delay in the commissioning of the milling system (the process by which the mined ore is finally converted into “yellow cake” for use in the reactors) at the Jaduguda mines in Jharkhand is a major factor behind the current fuel shortage.

... contd.