A week after a major 12-hour power breakdown — amounting to 8,000 megawatts, according to the energy minister — that deprived large swathes of the country, including provincial capitals Karachi and Lahore, of electricity, the Ministry of Energy has issued a report on the incident.
Shifting the blame on Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, the ministry stated that one of the three reasons of the blackout were ‘temporary and substandard repairs’ made to Karachi’s nuclear power plant KANUPP K-2 and K-3 in 2019.
The ministry further alleged that the canisters replaced in nuclear power plant during 2019 repairs were not meant to be used for transmission lines and were makeshift and a temporary arrangement.
Stating the third reason behind the blackout, the ministry said that the team had used old worn-out canisters in towers 26, 26-A and 27.
“Despite the sensitivity of the building the repairs made were temporary and not according to the standards set,” the ministry said adding that further investigations were being made in light of the recent reports.
The Ministry of Energy had earlier attributed the breakdown to an “accidental fault” in the transmission system.
“Several power plants in the south are tripping in phases due to an accidental fault in the country’s southern transmission system. As a result, there have been disruptions in the supply of electricity to the country’s south,” the ministry said in a tweet following reports of power outages.