The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Kalpakkam Reactor: All set for first pour of concrete by Manmohan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 25, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Kalpakkam Reactor: All set for first pour of concrete by Manmohan

By T.S. Subramanian

Acoustic polypropylene mats being laid on the cemented floor of the excavated pit of the PFBR at Kalpakkam. - Photo: S. Thanthoni

Chennai. Aug. 24. Under a blazing sun, on an expanse of cement floor the size of about three football fields, workers are busy training flames from torches on acoustic polypropylene membrane sheets rolled out on the floor. "This is base water-proofing," said their supervisor. The floor is about 18 metres below the ground level.

All round above, huge mounds of dug-up sand and rocky material are piled up. Dumper and tipper trucks are revving up the incline or going down.

Machines are running to pump out thousands of litres of water. For the excavated area is a little over 500 metres from the waves of the Bay of Bengal and water incursion has to be battled with.

Manmohan coming

Things are on course for the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to inaugurate the first pour of the concrete for construction of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam, 50 km from Chennai, on August 29. The PFBR will herald the commercial phase of the second stage of India's nuclear electricity programme. The PFBR has a novel size — 500 MWe capacity. While the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam has developed the complex technology for the PFBR, the Department of Atomic Energy's (DAE) newest baby, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), will build the PFBR. The reactor's fuel will be plutonium-uranium oxide. Its coolant is liquid sodium.

Eight buildings

There will be eight buildings at different levels. The reactor containment building will be 73 metres tall from the foundation; the building housing the steam generators will be taller at 85 metres; and the reactor vessel will be a massive contraption, 14 metres in diameter and 14 metres in height. Made of steel, the vessel will weigh 3,700 tonnes, including the fuel core and liquid sodium.

Behind the excavated area is the site assembly shop, which has two huge bays — one 34 metres tall and another 25 metres — where components such as reactor vessel, steam generators, and machines for handling radioactive fuel will be assembled.

A "height-pass test" is held for workers and they are tested for vertigo, blood pressure and so on.

The IGCAR has battled big challenges in developing the manufacturing technology for the PFBR. Special steel has been developed for fabricating the components.

In its Structural Mechanics Laboratory, tests are done on a "shake-table" to ensure that the reactor vessel can withstand earthquakes.

"This is an important occasion," Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, told The Hindu from Mumbai "because the first pour of the concrete for the PFBR construction marks the beginning of the commercial deployment of the second stage of the country's nuclear power programme." It is also important because the series of breeder reactors that would come up in the second stage have the potential to generate a few hundred thousand megawatts. "That the PFBR construction is taking place in the DAE's golden jubilee year adds to our happiness," Dr. Kakodkar said.

While 12 pressurised heavy water reactors have been built in the country under the first stage, the breeder reactors will form the second stage. They are called breeder reactors because they breed more fuel than they consume. As a forerunner to the PFBR, the IGCAR built the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) at Kalpakkam and it is operational from 1985. Under the third stage, advanced reactors using thorium as fuel will be built.

According to Baldev Raj, Director, IGCAR, the centre's "motivation is to make the PFBR technology robust."

"Today, with respect to technology-level, there is absolutely no doubt in our mind that we have not left out any technology which will come in the way of completing the PFBR in time." The PFBR will go critical by 2010-end and the project cost is Rs.3,492 crores. All the efforts of the BHAVINI and the IGCAR "will be to demonstrate that this first of its kind, high technology project can be built totally indigenously at less cost and shorter time as envisaged in the first project report," he said. Four more breeder reactors of 500 MWe each would be built before 2020. After that a series of breeder reactors, using metallic fuel, would generate 2,50,000 MWe by 2050. "You can now realise what the responsibility of the IGCAR is," Dr. Raj said.

According to Prabhat Kumar, Project Director, PFBR, BHAVINI, and R. Prabhakar, Director (Technical), BHAVINI, the PFBR had "one of the biggest excavated pits compared to any electricity plant in India. The entire pit has been excavated without any incident."

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