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Russian team visits site of new reactors

— PHOTO: A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

S.K. Jain (right), Chairman, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, and Sergei V. Kiriyenko (second from right), Director-General, Rosatom, coming out of the switchyard of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project on Wednesday after assessing the progress in the construction of the first two reactors from Russia. K. C. Purohit, Project Director, is third from right.

CHENNAI: Top-level delegations from Rosatom, the Russian Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) on Wednesday visited the site at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, where four more Russian nuclear power reactors (Kudankulam 3,4, 5 and 6) are to be built.

This site is adjacent to the site where two Russian reactors of 1,000 MWe each are now under construction by the NPCIL. S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, NPCIL, and Sergei V. Kirienko, Director-General, Rosatom, saw the “site grading” work that is under way for the four new reactors. Mr. Kirienko is heading a 17-member delegation of top nuclear engineers.

The first Russian reactor at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district will be reaching criticality by April 2009. Loading of lightly enriched uranium fuel bundles into the first reactor may take place in December 2008 or January 2009.

Ready-to-load enriched uranium fuel bundles have already reached Kudankulam from Russia. The massive fuel-loading machine also has arrived. The NPCIL has completed almost 90 per cent of the work on building the first reactor.

Mr. Jain, Mr. Kirienko, Mr. K.C. Purohit, Project Director, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP), K.S. Rao, Project Director (Kudankulam 3 and 4), and Russian nuclear engineers visited the switchyard of the two first two reactors, the demineralisation plant and the reactor building of the first unit. They went round the building where the fuel bundles for the first reactor are being stored.

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