The thrust and supporting rings for the under construction fifth 1000 MW unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KNPP) located in India’s Tamil Nadu state have been shipped from Russia, according to a statement last week by the Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom.
The Rosatom release said components shipped are machined rings with slots, which are designed to secure the nuclear reactor in the central part and from above and protect it against vertical, horizontal dynamic loads, as well as from the impact of earthquakes.
The items were shipped to KNPP by the Rosatom machine building division Atomenergomash’s engineering arm AEM Technologies, the statement said.
“The weight of one item is about 20 tons; the diameter is more than 5 meters. For the first time, two items were shipped by motor vehicle transport at once. First, the equipment will be delivered to the port of St. Petersburg, and then by water transport to India,” it said.
“The reactor is an item of the first safety class, which is a vertical cylindrical vessel with an elliptical bottom. Inside the reactor, there is a core and internals. From above, the vessel is hermetically sealed by a cover with drives of mechanisms and control and protection units installed on it, as well as nozzles for outputting cables of in-core monitoring sensors,” it added.
Rosatom is the equipment supplier and technical consultant for the KNPP, India’s largest nuclear plant operated by the state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India. Its units 1 and 2 of 1,000 MW capacity each, started commercial operations in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The construction is underway of four more Russian designed VVER-1000 type units at Kudankulam – 3, 4, 5 and 6 – also of 1,000 MW capacity each.
