MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. Deliveries of equipment for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, which is being built by Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom in India, have been normalized and are currently on schedule, the India Tribune newspaper reported on Monday, citing a senior official from the Nuclear Corporation of India (NPCIL).
"The reactor component supplies from Russia have now normalized after some initial problems," a senior official of the NPCIL said, as quoted by the publication.
According to the official, the delivery of equipment from Russia to India is the task of the NPCIL.
"During the Covid pandemic also we didn’t get ships. After the conflict the ships belonging to the western nations were not available to transport nuclear components from Russia to India. We approached the public sector shipping companies and they organised some ships. Later Russia’s Rosatom organized the ships to transport the components. Now the supplies are normalized and there is no impact," the official added.
The Kudankulam NPP is a nuclear power plant with VVER-1000 power units, located in southern India, in the state of Tamil Nadu. Since February 2016, the first power unit of the Kudankulam NPP has been steadily operating at its design capacity of 1,000 MW. The second power unit was connected to India's national power grid on August 29, 2016. The Master Framework Agreement with Rosatom on the construction of the third and fourth units was signed in the spring of 2014. In June 2017, the Engineering Division of Rosatom State Corporation and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited signed an agreement for the construction of the third stage (power units No. 5 and No. 6) of the Kudankulam NPP. In 2021, the construction of power units No.5 and No.6 began. The NPP is expected to start operating at full capacity in 2027.
Last week, the authorities of Bangladesh banned 69 Russian ships from entering the ports of the country. However, as the press service of Rosatom reported, the ban has not affected the schedule for the construction of the Rooppur nuclear power plant that Rosatom is building in the republic. The delivery of goods was arranged along an alternative route.