New Delhi, March 11: A nuclear power reactor in Kakrapar, Gujarat, automatically shut down this morning after sensors detected a water leak, the Nuclear Power Corporation said today, asserting that there has been no release of radioactivity.
The NPC, the government agency that operates India's commercial reactors, said a 220MW reactor in Kakrapar shut down at 9am after a leak in the coolant system located in the reactor's core.
"The safety systems of the reactor, including the back-up cooling systems, have worked as intended.... There has not been any abnormal release of radioactivity outside the plant or radiation exposures as a result of the incident," the NPC said in a statement.
A senior engineer at the Kakrapar nuclear power station told The Telegraph that such a leak had not occurred since the reactor unit became operational during in the 1990s.
He said reactor engineers and experts from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the country's nuclear regulator, are trying to determine the circumstances that led to the leak.
The AERB has asked the plant to be kept in the current shutdown state until the last incident is fully investigated and corrective actions are taken.
The Kakrapar station is located about 80km from Surat and has two 220MW units. Two larger units of 700MW are currently under construction at the site.
The NPC currently operates 21 commercial nuclear reactors in Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh with an installed capacity of 5780MW.