The largest nuclear power plant in India, the Kudankulam plant, has been offered a more advanced fuel option by the Russian state-owned nuclear energy business Rosatom, which will enable its reactors to run for an extended two-year cycle without stopping to load new fuel. The two VVER 1,000 MWe reactors in the Kudankulam Plant Nuclear Power Project now get their TVs – 2 M fuel from Rosatom’s nuclear fuel business, TVEL Fuel Company. Since this fuel has an 18-month fuel cycle, the reactor must be shut down every 1.5 years to load new fuel.
The more Advanced Technology Fuel (ATF), with a fuel cycle of a staggering 24 months, has recently been made available by TVEL. As a result, it will guarantee greater efficiency, more power output owing to the reactor’s extended operation, and considerable savings of the foreign cash required to purchase new fuel assemblies from Russia.
The senior vice-president of TVEL’s Research and Development Wing, Alexander Ugryumov, presented the new fuel technology to the Indian nuclear reactors at a recent conference in Hyderabad, according to a statement from Rosatom.
