Kudankulam will house the largest nuclear power plants in India and the flagship project of Russian-Indian technological and energy cooperation.
Russia's Rosatom on Monday said it has shipped the 320 ton reactor vessel for the sixth 1,000 MW atomic power plant being built in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.
A set of four steam generators for the sixth unit will be shipped in 2025, the Russian company said.
According to Rosatom, the reactor vessel was manufactured at the Atommash plant (Rosatom's machine building division) and shipped to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL).
Before sending the reactor vessel on a sea voyage, the equipment was delivered by special motor transport to the plant's pier, where it was loaded onto a river vessel, the destination of which was the Russian sea port Novorossiysk.
At the port, the reactor vessel was placed in the hold of a sea vessel for the 6,000-mile journey to India, Rosatom said.
Currently, four new nuclear power units are being built at the Kudankulam according to a Russian design.
The power station is being designed, constructed and supplied with equipment subdivisions of Rosatom's engineering division.
'Despite the confident position we have achieved in the nuclear world, we are not standing still. We are developing and making our work more perfect both in terms of equipment design, ensuring an unprecedented level of safety, and in terms of the economic efficiency of our products,' noted Valery Kryzhanovsky, general designer, OKB GIDROPRESS.
'We are currently developing a reactor installation for a nuclear power plant with increased capacity, more modern operational properties, improved technical and economic indicators for use in Russia and abroad,' Kryzhanovsky added.
The production cycle for manufacturing a VVER-1000 reactor vessel from the start of production is two years.
The manufacture of the equipment requires the highest level of precision and compliance with strict international quality standards.
The overall quality plan includes 289 control points.
Kudankulam will house the largest nuclear power plants in India and the flagship project of Russian-Indian technological and energy cooperation.
Construction of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant involves the construction of six power units with VVER-1000 reactors with a total installed capacity of 6,000 MW.
Units No 1 and 2 were connected to the national grid of India in 2013 and 2016 and supply electricity to the southern Indian region.
Currently, construction and installation work on units 3 and 4 is nearing completion, and construction of two power units of the third stage (units 5 and 6) has begun.
Rosatom provides fuel to the power units at Kudankulam throughout their entire life cycle.
Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at
venkatacharijagannathan@gmail.com
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
© 2025