India’s first indigenously developed nuclear power plant unit in Gujarat has started operations at full capacity.
Key points
- The first largest indigenous 700 MWe Kakrapar Nuclear Power Plant Unit-3 in Gujarat started operations at full capacity.
- The Kakrapar Unit-3 is an expansion of the existing nuclear power plant, which already had two operational units, KAPS-1 and KAPS-2, each with a capacity of around 220 MWe (megawatts electrical).
- The third unit is larger and more advanced compared to the first two.
- The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited or NPCIL, which operates the nuclear plants in the country, said that KAPP-3 and 4 are India’s first pair of indigenously designed Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) of 700 MW unit size with enhanced safety features.
- The PHWRs, which use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator, constitute the mainstay of India’s nuclear power fleet.
- The biggest advantage of the PHWR design being the use of thin walled pressure tubes instead of large pressure vessels used in pressure vessel type reactors. This results in a distribution of pressure boundaries to a large number of small diameter pressure tubes and thereby lowers the severity of the consequence of an accidental rupture of the pressure boundary than in a pressure vessel type reactor.
- The 700 MWe PHWR design has enhanced safety through dedicated ‘Passive Decay Heat Removal System’, which has the capability of removing decay heat (the heat released as a result of radioactive decay) from the reactor core without requiring any operator actions, on the lines of similar technology adopted for Generation III+ plants to negate the possibility of a Fukushima type accident that happened in Japan in 2011.
- The 700 MWe PHWR unit is equipped with a steel-lined containment to reduce any leakages and a containment spray system to reduce the containment pressure in case of a loss of coolant accident.
