Rosatom starts building fifth unit of Kudankulam NPP in India
MOSCOW. June 29 (Interfax) - Rosatom Group began pouring the first concrete at the No. 5 unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in India on Tuesday, signalling the start of its construction.
The ceremony was held by video conferencing due to coronavirus restrictions, the Russian state nuclear corporation's engineering division, ASE said.
"The project to build the Kudankulam NPP has been a symbol of close cooperation between Russia and India for many years. But we don't want to rest on our laurels. Rosatom has all the latest nuclear energy technologies. Together with our Indian colleagues, we are prepared to jointly roll out serial construction of the latest 3+ generation of Russian-designed nuclear generating units at a new site in India. This is envisioned by existing agreements," Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev was reported as saying at the ceremony.
The Kudankulam NPP is being built in India under a bilateral agreement signed on November 20, 1988 and additions to it dated June 21, 1998. Construction began in 2002 on the first two generating units with VVER-1000 reactors with combined capacity of 2,000 MW.
Russia has completed the first two units at the Kudankulam NPP, and in June 2017 India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board granted a permit to pour the first concrete of the second phase, which includes generating units No. 3 and No. 4. The general agreement on the construction of these units was signed in April 2014 and the planned start of warranty operation is in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
A general framework agreement on the construction of the third phase of the Kudankulam NPP, the fifth and sixth units, was signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2017.
The roadmap for cooperation in nuclear energy between Russia and India calls for the construction of a total 12 generating units in the India, including four to eight units at Kudankulam. The countries have also agreed that India will allocate one more site for a Russian-designed nuclear power plant.