amshedpur: Uranium Corporation of India (UCIL), the sole domestic nuclear fuel provider to the country’s indigenously built nuclear reactors, is poised to start a giant uranium mining-cum-processing project in Kanampalle. The company is already on the verge of completing its 3,000-tpd mine-cum-processing plant at Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh. To be taken up on full completion of the Tummalapalle expansion project, the neighbouring Kanampalle project is slated to be a “very, very big” project of around 6,000 tpd, three times the size of its largest and most modern 2,000-tpd Narwapahar mine. Interacting with the media at Narwapahar, UCIL CMD D Acharya said that the uranium producer’s 3,000 tonne per day (tpd) mines, along with a processing plant at Tummalapalle in the recently-named YSR district of Andhra Pradesh, was almost complete and was scheduled to become operational before March 31 this year. “We are proceeding with segment-wise trials of the 3,000-tpd processing plant,” said the UCIL CMD. Acharya said UCIL would now be undertaking a 1,500-tpd mining and processing plant expansion of the Tummalapalle project site at a cost of around R760 crore, which would take the total Tummalapalle project capacity to 4,500 tpd at an investment of R1,860 crore.