While Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) achieved its first milestone by achieving criticality on Saturday, protesters have again vowed to fight against it until death. The protesters said fishermen would stop work for a day and keep the shops closed on Monday. According to M Pushparayan, a leader of People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), a community meeting with leaders from the fishermen and farmers’ communities was held on Sunday and a decision to go ahead with protest was taken. “As a token of our protest, the fishermen in the area would restrain from work tomorrow and we urge all the fishermen in the state to do the same showing solidarity to the protest,” said Pushparayan. The shops in the area would remain closed and black flag would be hoisted in all the houses and shops in the area. The Unit 1 of the 1,000 MW Plant achieved criticallity on Saturday, following Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) announcement that it has granted clearance for First Approach to Criticality (FAC) of Unit-1 of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KK-NPP) as the next major stage for commissioning. Following a delay of nearly six years, the prospects of power production at Kudankulam Nuclear Plant in Tamil Nadu had looked bright, but the move for further agitation has cast a shadow over it. J Daniel Chellappa, technical coordinator, Central Expert Group on KNPP, had said, “It’s a historic moment and a red-letter day. The First unit at India’s first PWR (Light Water) 1,000 MW achieved criticality at 2305 hours on Saturday (July 13, 2013).” According to an AERB release, issued on Thursday, in general terms, FAC is the commencement of the controlled nuclear fission process for the first time and is a step towards the subsequent beginning of power production in a nuclear reactor. Following the FAC, several number of low power tests will be carried out in order to verify the conformance of reactor characteristics to the design objectives before granding clearance for the next commissioning stage which is the phase-wise increase in reactor power level. Unit-1 is the first of two units of VVER (Russian) reactors located in Kudankulam, southern part of the state, with installed capacity of 1,000 MW each.