Kudankulam unit 3 soon to receive steam generators

Tuesday, 23 October 2018

Two Russian-designed V-491 VVER units, of 1000 MWe (gross) capacity each, are under construction at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, and two V-412 VVER units are already in operation at the site with a third phase of two more reactors planned.

The set of heat-exchange equipment has been transferred by road from the Atommash gate to a specialised wharf at the Tsimlyansk Reservoir, an artificial lake on the Don River, AEM Technology said on 19 October. The equipment will then be transported by water to Saint Petersburg, from where it will travel around Europe and through the Suez Canal to the south of Tamil Nadu. The length of the route is 21,000 kilometres, the company said.

The shipment is the first to a country not among the Commonwealth of Independent States in the new history of Atommash, Rovshan Abbasov, a director at AEM Technology, said. Atommash's production site had a nearly 30-year hiatus until it became part of Rosatom in 2012.

"It can be said that a large series of shipments of our equipment outside the post-Soviet area starts with India," Abbasov said. "Today reactors and steam generators for Turkey and Bangladesh are located at various stages of production in the factory's workshops. Contracts for equipment production for nuclear power plants in Egypt, Finland, and Hungary have been signed. By 2021, we should significantly increase the production of equipment," he added.

Production of a PGV-1000M steam generator, from the start of manufacturing semi-finished metallurgical products to its shipment, takes about two years, AEM Technology said. Some 340 kilogrammes of coating tape, 5.5 tonnes of welding electrodes and 8 tonnes of welding wire are used to manufacture one PGV-1000M. Nearly 11,000 heat-exchange tubes with a total length of about 130km are internally welded to the steam generator. Each steam generator has a diameter of more than 4 metres, is about 14m long and weighs 340 tonnes.

For effective cooperation in the production of the equipment for the Kudankulam plant, a permanent presence of Indian experts was organised at the Atommash site, AEM Technology said. Work continues with the next set of equipment for the Kudankulam plant, including four steam generators for unit 4.