‘Mettur could have been a major industrial disaster’

Mettur could have been a major industrial disaster.

It was a rather lucky escape for the Mettur Thermal Power Station — it got away with just some bruises in the fire accident that happened on Thursday. If the conveyor system that had caught fire had not broken down and fallen to the ground, the fire could have spread to the boiler side, where there is an oil tank.

Hundreds of lives could have been lost and the entire power station could have gone up in flames, a technical expert who visited the spot on Friday, told Business Line.

The boiler could have exploded, the expert, who did not want to be named (because he works for a public sector company) said.

Meanwhile, Business Line learns that a Chennai-based company called Chennai Radha Engineering Works (CREW) is likely to be awarded the job of restoring the Mettur thermal power station.

CREW describes itself as “a leading company in the vertical of bulk material handling systems, undertaking projects in thermal power plants and ports.”

CREW is said to have assured the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board that it would bring the Mettur plant back to life in 20 days.

However, an internal report of the Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation, a subsidiary of TNEB, gives the ‘committed date by the field’ as June 15. The note describes the outage of the plant as caused by ‘total damage in the coal feeding conveyor system due to fire’.

On Thursday, 2,184 MW of plants in Tamil Nadu were out of operation. This included 1,664 MW of ‘forced outage’ and 620 MW of ‘planned outage’.

>mramesh@thehindu.co.in

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