Chennai, Sep 13 (IANS) The Rs.5,600 crore ($1.25 billion) prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) under construction at Kalpakkam, around 80 km from here, is expected to get its fourth critical component, the inner vessel, this week.
The sodium cooled fast reactor designed by the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) has three vessels – a safety vessel, a main vessel and an inner vessel.
The 11-metre tall inner vessel, the smallest of the three, would support reactor components like pumps, heat exchangers and others.
‘We hope to lower the inner vessel Wednesday. However it depends on the rain gods as the weather department has predicted rains over the next 48 hours,’ Prabhat Kumar, project director, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (Bhavini), told IANS.
The fast breeder reactor, which breeds more material for a nuclear fission reaction than it consumes, is one of the key projects of India’s three-stage nuclear power programme. India became the sixth country to have such a technology, way back in 1985.
The PFBR is expected to start operations next September.
The project achieved its third milestone in May this year when another critical component, thermal baffle, a cylindrical safety vessel weighing 60 tonne, measuring 12 metre in diameter and more than six metres in height, was lowered into the main vessel.
The thermal baffle is crucial equipment which helps in keeping the sodium used in the plant cool.
