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Russia ensures greater safety for upcoming units of KNPP

Last Updated 25 July 2016, 19:33 IST

Prodded by India, Russia has ensured greater safety parameters for the upcoming third and fourth units of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) than the first two.

Even the first two units of the KNPP in Tamil Nadu have been found to be ready to withstand a disaster like the one that hit the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Japan on March 11, 2011.

But Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear energy corporation of Russia, has agreed to further raise the safety parameters for the third and fourth units, following a request from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited. 

“The Indian side requested us to review the possibility of enhancing certain parameters and we also undertook the effort of analysing and enhancing them. So Units 3 and 4 are designed for even higher seismic, climatic and technical impact (than Units 1 and 2),” Vladimir Angelov, Director (India) of Atomostroyexport (ASE) Group of Companies—the engineering arm of Rosatom—told  DH.

He said that KNPP was the first nuclear power plant in the world where “the post-Fukushima safety enhancement requirements” had already been implemented and is being operated successfully. “We analysed the basic technical design of Units 1 and 2 in terms of the lessons (learnt) from (the disaster at) Fukushima. We came to the conclusion that they would have withstood the Fukushima-like incident.

However, we are enforcing even stricter requirements,” said Angelov.

India and Russia signed the General Framework Agreement for the third and fourth units of the KNPP in April 2014. The construction works for the new units of the power plant commenced in February 2016.

Angelov said that the KNPP units were designed to withstand the “impact of earthquake, tsunami, tornado and hurricanes” and “even fall of an aeroplane”.
“There are number of the advanced active and passive safety systems which ensure unprecedented design level of nuclear and ecological safety of the NPP. Double localising and protecting containment, passive heat removal system from reactor plant, core catcher, and closed industrial water intake for the power plant are some of them,” he said.

In the event of a mishap, the passive heat removal system will ensures cooling of the steam generator in automatic mode, without energy supply and participation of personnel. The core catcher prevents penetration of the core melting into the ground and environment, thus containing radioactive contamination, said the top official of the Atomostroyexport.
 

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(Published 25 July 2016, 19:33 IST)

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