Chennai: The construction of fifth and sixth units of the 1000 MW Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) began with the first pour of concrete on Tuesday in the southern Tirunelveli district of Tamilnadu.
The first pour of concrete is an important milestone in a nuclear power project that is reckoned as the start date of the project.
The event was launched by Kamlesh Nilkanth Vyas, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), in the presence of Dr Alexey Likhachev, Director General of ROSATOM and Mr Satish Kumar Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) through video conferencing.
Senior DAE and NPCIL officials and those from Larsen and Toubro were present on the occasion.
Dr Likachev said for many years the KKNPP construction project has been a symbol of close cooperation between Russia and India.
“However, we do not want to stop at what had already been achieved. Rosatom has all the most advanced nuclear power technologies. Together with our Indian colleagues we are ready to launch the serial construction of the state-of-the-art Generation III+ Russian-designed nuclear power units at a new site in India. It is stipulated by the existing agreements,” he said.
The KKNPP comprised six units of Light Water Reactors (VVERs) each of 1000 MW, set up in technical cooperation with the Russian Federation.
The reactors set up at Kudankulam are state-of-the-art in terms of safety and incorporate a combination of advanced, multilayered safety features ensuring the highest level of safety of the plant, public and environment. The project is being implemented in three phases of 2X1000 MW each.
While Units 1 and 2 set up in the first phase are in operation, Units 3 and 4 of the second phase are under construction and have achieved about 50 per cent physical progress.
The construction of the Units 5 and 6 of the third phase, which began Tuesday, are scheduled to be completed in 66 months and 75 months respectively.
On the progressive completion of KKNPP 3 to 6, Kudankulam site will supply 6000 MW of clean, base load power to the nation.
Russia is building the KNPP under an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) of 1988 and follow the agreements in 1998 and 2008.
The Unit-1 joined the grid in October 2013 and the Unit-2 was connected to the grid in August 2016.
After signing the General Framework Agreement (GFA) on April 10, 2014 for construction of Units 3 and 4, negotiations began for the construction of Units 5 and 6 and an agreement was reached that these units would be constructed in compliance with the same design as it was stipulated for the Units 3, 4.
On 1 June, 2017, the credit protocol of the IGA of 5 December, 2008, and the GFA for the Units 5 and 6 were signed, Rosatom state said in a statement.
Meanwhile, even as the first pour of concrete for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project’s reactors 5 and 6 was conducted on Tuesday, the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) has appealed to the State government to stop the expansion of the KKNPP by constructing new reactors.
In a petition, its coordinator S P Udhayakumar said the KKNPP had ‘all of a sudden’ conducted the first pour of concrete even as technical glitch hit the second reactor on multiple occasions in last May. Moreover, the first reactor had been stopped for ‘annual maintenance and fuel loading.’