29.01.2024
On January 24, the reactor vessel was installed in the design position at the construction site of the Kudankulam NPP Unit 4 (the Republic of India, general designer and general contractor is the Engineering Division of the Rosatom State Corporation).
The work was launched by Andrei Petrov, the First Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy of the "Rosatom” State Corporation - ASE JSC President and Bhuwan Chandra Pathak, Chairman and Managing Director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) who attended the construction site as part of the fourth meeting of the Joint Coordination committee (acting as co-chairs).
The reactor vessel was installed with the Open Top technology, which had been successfully tested at Unit No. 3 (this technology involved installation of the reactor vessels through an open dome, which could significantly increase the installation speed). The preparations for the operation were completed in record-breaking time, i.e. in the morning, the equipment was brought into the vertical position, lifted by crane to a 50m height and taken down into the reactor shaft of the reactor building.
After the reactor vessel has been installed, the equipment of the nuclear steam supply system including steam generators, casings of the reactor coolant pump units and the pressurizer will start to be installed.
The reactor vessel weighing over 317 tons was brought from Volgodonsk to the Kudankulam NPP construction site in 2023 as part of the extremely complicated and large-scale simultaneous shipment of two reactor vessels and eight steam generators for two nuclear power plants being built in India and China.
Information about Kudankulam NPP Project
Kudankulam NPP is India's largest nuclear power plant and the flagship project of Russian-Indian technological and energy cooperation. The NPP is located in the south of India, in Tamil Nadu State. The NPP's customer and operator is the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL), its general contractor being ASE JSC, its general designer being Atomenergoproekt JSC, its chief designer being OKB Gidropress.
The Kudankulam NPP construction involves the erection of six power units with VVER-1000 type reactors of 6000MW gross installed capacity. The first stage of power units No. 1&2 was connected to the national grid of India in 2013 and 2016, to operate at the rated power levels. Currently, the construction and erection work is underway; the supply of equipment is being completed at units No. 3&4; the construction of two power units of the third stage is also underway.
In addition to the construction of nuclear power units, Rosatom arranges for the supply of reliable and efficient nuclear fuel for VVER-1000 to India, while increasing the operating efficiency of these reactors through the introduction of extended fuel cycles.
