New Delhi, October 23: Faced with an acute shortage of uranium to run existing power stations, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has advanced its maintenance schedule and started shutting down individual power units. Usually, these units are shut down in a staggered manner but this time they have been bunched together so that authorities get time to arrange for uranium supplies.

Over the past few weeks, as many as five units amounting to 1000 MW of the total 4000 MW were shut down on account of upkeep of plants: two units from Tarapur (Maharashtra) and one each from Kaiga (Karnataka), Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu) and Kakrapar (Gujarat).

Already, most of the plants that were running at 90-95 per cent capacity until last year are now down to 50-70 per cent reflecting the serious uranium crisis facing the country.

With the nuclear deal taking more and more time, the Indian programme has to depend on domestic uranium supplies which show few signs of matching the efficiency of reactors. In short, the choking of the indigenous programme due to fuel shortage is soon becoming a reality.

Acknowledging that there is a fuel supply “mismatch” due to further delays in the commissioning of the milling system in Jharkhand mines, one of the main sources of domestic fuel supply, authorities are having to innovate on their maintenance schedule. Hoping that the fuel situation may ease a bit in the next month or so, sources said, the NPCIL felt that this period could be used for maintenance which anyhow requires shutting down a reactor for about 20 days.

The plan is that as and when fuel is available, these reactors can come back to action. NPCIL officials said they are working on re-starting some of these reactors. A senior NPCIL official did admit: “We normally don’t undertake simultaneous shutdown of so many reactors.”

Officials choose to use the term “mismatch” because stating shortage would mean that all mining options have been fully exploited. While this play of word may help convey that more domestic uranium will be available soon, the fact is that long-term planning will be seriously affected if such mismatch continues.

In other words, the NPCIL has been able to provide breathing space for DAE to somehow increase uranium supply from the source. But sources admitted that the option of importing uranium was becoming increasingly vital given the kind of expansion planned.