1st unit of India's Kudankulam NPP connected to power grid
MOSCOW. Oct 22 (Interfax) - The first power generating unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (NPP) in India was connected to the power grid at 1:15 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday, a spokesman for Russia's state-run atomic energy corporation Rosatom told Interfax, referring to the corporation's head Sergei Kiriyenko
The Kudankulam NPP is being built under a Russian-Indian agreement signed on November 20, 1988 and addenda to it signed on June 21, 1998. Construction of the first two generating units with VVER-1000 reactors with combined capacity of 2,000 MW began in 2002 under the management of Atomstroyexport (ASE), which is now a division of state nuclear corporation Rosatom.
Fuel began to be loaded into the reactor of the first unit on September 19, 2012 and was completed in early October 2012.
The first generating unit of the Kudankulam NPP was launched at minimum controlled reactor power in July. It reached 20% of its capacity by the end of September.
It was reported earlier that the launch of the second unit had been pushed back to June 2014 from March 2014. The launch of the first unit at the plant, initially planned for 2011, has also been postponed repeatedly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference after a Russian-Indian summit in Moscow on Monday that the first generating unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant would be connected to India's power system in the next couple hours.
Rosatom head Kiriyenko, for his part, said that a road map on cooperation in nuclear power between Russia and India called for 15 generating units to be built in India in total, including between four and eight at Kudankulam. The second has been built, its equipment is arriving and its launch is due in 2014.
Regarding the third and fourth reactors at Kudankulam, Kiriyenko said there were fundamental agreements but that India wants lawyers to have a look at those documents.