Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant: Construction Of Last Unit Begins With Russia's Help

The last and the 6th unit of the Kudankulam plant is likely to produce electricity up to 1,000 MW capacity and will be developed by PSU Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd and Russia. 

Kudankulam nuclear power plant | Credit: ABP Nadu

Chennai: The construction of the last unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant has officially started on Monday with the help of Rosatom, the state-run Russian nuclear energy corporation. The announcement of the construction was made on Tuesday after the first foundation slab was laid for the reactor building. 

According to a report on Times of India, the last and the 6th unit of the Kudankulam plant is likely to produce electricity up to 1,000 MW capacity and will be developed by PSU Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd and Russia.

The foundation was laid for unit No. 5 reactor in June and the final reactor on December 20. Both the units form the third stage of Kudankulam NPP and the additional power generated by the reactors will be used for industrial and commercial business development in Tamil Nadu and India, as per the report.

Unit 1 and 2 of the power plant are generating power as per the operation schedule while the power units of 3 & 4, 5 & 6 are under construction with VVER-1000 (V-412) type of reactor.

The water-water energetic reactor (WWER) or VVER is a series of water reactors that were originally developed by Russia before 1970s. The model of VVER is continuously updated and the first prototype of VVER-210 was used to set up Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant in Russia in 1957.

Earlier, Union Atomic Energy Minister Jitendra Singh told the Parliament that the physical progress of unit 3, 7, 4 has achieved 54.9% by November 2021 and the works for unit 3 will be completed by March 2023 and unit 4 by November 2023. 

The present nuclear power capacity in India is 6.780 MW while the total nuclear power electricity generation is 3.1% in 2020-21, the report said.