India receives uranium fuel from Russia

According to Nuclear Power Corporation of India officials, India has received the first consignment of uranium fuel from Russia for unit-1 of 1000 MW Kudankulam Nuclear power project (KKNPP).

The KKNPP is under construction at Kudankulam located in Radhapuram taluka of Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district. The project is set up through a bilateral agreement between the erstwhile USSR and India.

Under the Indo-Russian collaboration, India can reprocess the spent fuel from these reactors and all the activities at Kudankulam will be under International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards, NPCIL said.

The two KKNPP units belong to advanced design of VVER family, a pressurised light water reactor (LWR), constituting majority of nuclear reactors of the world using LEU.
This kind of fuel is in use in VVER-1000 MW units in several countries around the world since 1980s and has given excellent performance.