India's first nuclear power units complete 40 years tomorrow

Mumbai (PTI): The inaugural units of Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS), India's first nuclear power plant, will complete 40 years of successful generation of electricity from nuclear energy power on Wednesday.

It was on April 1, 1969, that the two reactors of 160 MW each built by US power major General Electric (GE) on a turn-key basis at Tarapur, 120 km from here, were synchronised to the grid.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), a public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) will be felicitating those engineers who were responsible for synchronising the plants to the grid at a function in Tarapur tomorrow, TAPS officials said.

The station has generated more than 77 billion units of electricity so far, and is supplying it to Maharashtra and Gujarat at a tariff of 94 paise per unit.

"TAPS is a very successful project of the Department of Atomic Energy. The plant was set up under an agreement between the Governments of India and USA," Atomic Energy Commission Member Dr M R Srinivasan, who was then responsible for signing the contract with GE, told PTI.

India was the first country to get nuclear energy in Asia besides erstwhile USSR as early as 1969, he said.