---
title: "Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant: India's Largest"
description: "Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is India's largest nuclear station, crucial for energy policy, built with Russian VVER-1000 reactors in Tamil Nadu."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/glossary/kudankulam-nuclear-power-plant"
---

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Model Diplomat Research Team · Last reviewed June 22, 2026

TL;DR

- The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is India's largest nuclear power station, located in Tamil Nadu, built with Russian VVER-1000 reactors under a 1988 Indo-Soviet agreement.
- Why does Kudankulam use imported fuel when India has an indigenous nuclear programme?
- Is the Kudankulam plant under IAEA safeguards?
- How did the 2013 Supreme Court ruling affect the project?
- What will Kudankulam's total capacity be when complete?

[Civil Service & Diplomatic Exams](https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/civil-services/glossary)Updated June 22, 2026

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is India's largest nuclear power station, located in Tamil Nadu, built with Russian VVER-1000 reactors under a 1988 Indo-Soviet agreement.

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## Positions at a glance

### Supporters

The contemporary diplomacy around Kudankulam runs through New Delhi and Moscow, with the Department of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of External Affairs, and Rosatom as principal interlocutors. Construction milestones for the later units have repeatedly featured in India-Russia annual summit communiqués, and the project has been cited as evidence of the durability of the bilateral "special and privileged strategic partnership" despite Western sanctions on Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The plant has periodically drawn scrutiny over payment channels and component supply chains amid those sanctions, and over the continuity of Russian fuel and engineering support.

### Opponents

The plant has been the subject of sustained controversy. The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), led by S. P. Udayakumar, mounted prolonged protests from 2011, intensified after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident, raising concerns about seismic and tsunami risk along the coast, radioactive waste, and the displacement of fishing communities. The Supreme Court of India, in G. Sundarrajan v. Union of India (2013), permitted commissioning to proceed, holding that the project served the larger public interest while directing compliance with safety conditions monitored by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Operational reliability has also been questioned, with several unplanned outages reported in the units' early years, and questions raised about the liability regime under the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, whose supplier-liability provisions complicated negotiations for later units and other imported reactors.

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In August 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with Russian participation, dedicated Kudankulam Unit 1 to the nation, marking the commissioning of India's first 1,000-MW VVER reactor.

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