India Receives Russian Uranium for Kudankulam Unit 2

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director of state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) (Mumbai), recently announced that Russia has sent the first consignment of light enriched uranium fuel for Unit 2 of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. The consignment reached India August 20, and a second consignment is expected to arrive later this week. The total quantity of fuel to be received from Russia has not been disclosed, but will be sufficient for the reactor's lifetime. Several more consignments of fuel will be sent by Russia for the 2,000-megawatt (MW) Kudankulam plant. India will reprocess the enriched uranium and keep the plutonium under safe conditions. Russia sent a consignment of fuel for the first unit in early 2008.

The Kudankulam project is being set up by NPCIL with the assistance of Russia's Moscow-based Atomenergoproekt and Atomstroyexport. The project plan includes six pressurized water reactors of 1,000 MW each. Russia has supplied the first two units of the project with two VVER-1000 (V-392) reactors under a contract worth $3 billion. NPCIL is building the reactors and will be operating the units under International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna, Austria) safeguards. The first unit was initially expected to begin operations in 2008, but the schedule has been pushed back two years, and Unit 1 will now be commissioned next year. According to Jain, the first unit is 94% complete, and fuel loading will be completed by the end of this year. Work on the second unit was 82% complete as of July 2009 and will begin operations within eight months of the first unit's commissioning. Jain added that 99% of the components are already available at the site, but implementing a project where the site is in one country and the components are being manufactured in another is quite complex.

Dummy fuel is expected to arrive from Russia this week. Dummy fuel has several features similar to real fuel, particularly weight. The first unit will be loaded with the dummy fuel for the testing procedures. If all systems function as expected, the real fuel will be loaded into the first unit. The most significant difference between the dummy fuel and real fuel is that the former does not contain uranium.

The Kudankulam facility will include four more units. Site-leveling and laying of the road has started in preparation for setting up the VVER units that will arrive from Russia. Russia and India signed an inter-governmental agreement in December 2008 for the construction of the four new units. Groundwork for construction of units 3 and 4 is scheduled to begin in early 2010, and they are expected to begin operations about two years after units 1 and 2 go live. Units 3 and 4 will be commissioned within six months of each other. The schedule for units 5 and 6 has not yet been disclosed.

Geotechnical investigation of the four new units is complete and involved extensive testing of soil and underlying rock. The Centre for Earth Science Studies (Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) assisted the project team by carrying out studies related to ocean currents. According to K.S. Rao, project director of units 3 and 4, transportation of the 4,000 MW of power that will be generated by the four new units has not yet been planned. As in the first two units, Atomstroyexport will supply NPCIL with equipment and drawings, while NPCIL will handle construction.

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