The dome of the unit 3 reactor building at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant was installed last week. The lifting was done by a Liebherr LR 11350 heavy crane in an operation that took about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Rosatom said that preassembling on the ground with the installation of one structure instead of two made it possible to reduce the duration of construction and installation works at the reactor building by almost a month.

Andrey Lebelev vice president of ASE JSC for Projects in India said “We share our experience and our technologies with our partners we perform the necessary training and fulfil all the obligations. This allows us to be confident in the quality of our products and services and maintain the trust-based relations.”

Kudankulam is a long-term strategic project between India and Russia that began with an intergovernmental agreement in 1988. Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is building four new VVER-1000 units of 1000 MWe each in Kudankulam Tamil Nadu - units 3 4 5 and 6. The expected completion dates for Kundankulam 3 and 4 are in 2023. Kudankulam 1 and 2 entered commercial operation in December 2014 and April 2017 respectively.

In July Rosatom said that installing equipment at Kudankulam unit 3 using the “open top” technique - while the dome was open - had saved between five and seven months of construction time.