CHENNAI: The second steam generator for Unit 4 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has been shipped from Russia to the construction site in Tamil Nadu, according to Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation.
The equipment will reach India using multi-modal transport from Volgodonsk by road and water transport to Saint-Petersburg port, then by water transport through Baltic and Mediterranean seas, Suez Canal, Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The length of the route is 21,000 kilometres with complex logistics.
This comes after Rosatom supplied the main equipment for Unit-3 of the plant, including the core melt localization device, a passive safety system capable of functioning even in the event of a complete loss of power supply.
Built by Atomenergomash, the machine-building division of Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, the diameter of the steam generator is over 4 m, length 15 m, and weight 340 tonnes. The set of equipment for one power unit of a nuclear power plant of this type includes four steam generators.
In the nuclear power plant, heat is removed from the reactor core by a coolant, which passes through the core. This thermal energy is used to produce steam in the steam generator. Steam’s mechanical energy is supplied to the turbine generator where it is converted into electricity.
Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation is the technical consultant and main equipment supplier to the Kudankulam NPP, which is being constructed under the India-Russia agreement of 1988 and its attachments dated 1998 and the agreement of December 8, 2008.