 "Kudankulam N-plant attains criticality on Saturday")
The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) has achieved its first milestone on Saturday. The Unit 1 of the 1000 MWe Plant achieved criticality on Saturday late night.
It may be noted, on Thursday the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) on Thursday announced that it has granted clearance for First Approach to Criticality (FAC) of Unit-1 of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KK-NPP) as the next major stage for commissioning.
After a delay of nearly over six years, the prospects of power production at Kudankulam Nuclear Plant at Tamil Nadu looks bright.
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According to J DAniel Chellappa, technical coordinator, Central Expert Group on KNPP "it is a historic moment and a red-letter day. The First unit at India's first PWR (Light Water) 1000 MWe achieved criticality at 2305 hours on Saturday (July 13, 2013).
According to AERB release, issued on Thursday, in general terms, FAC is the commencement of the controlled nuclear fission process for the first time and is a step towards the subsequent beginning of power production in a nuclear reactor.
Following FAC, several number of low power tests will be carried out in order to verify the conformance of reactor characteristics to the design objectives before granding clearance for the next commissioning stage which is the phase-wise increase in reactor power level.
Unit-1 is the first of two units of VVER (Russian) reactors located at Kudankulam, on the southern part of the Tamil Nadu, with installed capacity of 1000 MW each.