Chennai, Oct 12 (IANS): Officials at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) have been asked to work tirelessly without taking leave to run the turbine at an earliest, sources said Saturday.

"Testing and fine-tuning of the systems are on. The project officials want to run the turbine in a couple of days after sorting out the issues," a source close to KNPP told IANS, preferring anonymity.

Another source not wanting to be named told IANS: " While the reactor systems are working well, sufficient pressure is not being built to run the turbine. This issue is being looked into now. Officials want to run the turbine at least by the end of this month."

Officials at KNPP were not available for comments.

The first unit at Kudankulam is 99.74 percent complete, as of August 2013.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is setting up two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here.

KNPP is India's first pressurised water reactor belonging to the light water reactor category.

The first unit attained criticality, which is the beginning of the fission process, July 13.

The NPCIL had earlier said it would connect the first unit to the grid end-August, generating 400 MW power.

But that did not happen due to problems on the electrical systems side.

The NPCIL then revised the plant's date of commercial operation to September and then to October.