The welding of the steam generator heads for the fifth unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) located in India’s Tamil Nadu state has been completed in Russia, the Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom announced earlier this week.
A Rosatom statement said that the welding work was carried out at the Volgodonsk plant of Atommash which is a subsidiary of Atomenergomash, the machine building division of Rosatom.
Rosatom is the equipment supplier and technical consultant for the KNPP being operated by the state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). The KNPP units 1 and 2 of 1,000 MW capacity each are already commercially connected to the grid. As per an intergovernmental agreement, Rosatom is similarly collaborating in the construction of four more units at Kudankulam – 3, 4, 5 and 6 – of 1,000 MW capacity each.
The equipment of one NPP unit includes four steam generators and the statement said the automatic welding of the steam generator heads is done at temperatures of 120 degrees Celsius to 250 degrees Celsius over seven days. Specialists will perform local heat treatment of welds and a range of technical inspections, including hydraulic tests and eddy-current tests of heat-exchange tubes.
“The steam generator is a heat exchange equipment, part of the reactor facility and belongs to the first safety class items. The equipment is about 14 meters long, over 4 meters in diameter, and weighs 350 tons”, the statement added.
Earlier, the fabrication of the heat-exchanging apparatus, also known as the relief tank, for unit 5 of KNPP was completed in June this year and Rosatom had announced that the equipment was being shipped to India.
