The reactor vessel was produced at AEM-Technology's Atommash production site in Volgodonsk, Rostov Oblast, travelling by road, and then river, to the port of Novorossiysk from where it takes its lengthy journey by sea.
Valery Kryzhanovsky, General Designer of OKB Gidropress, the main designer of VVER plants, said: "Despite the confident position we have achieved in the nuclear world, we are not standing still ... both in terms of equipment design, ensuring an unprecedented level of safety, and in terms of the economic efficiency of our products."
Rosatom says the production cycle for manufacturing a VVER-1000 reactor vessel is two years and includes 289 control points. It added that representatives from India have been at the site since the start of equipment manufacturing for Kudankulam in 2016.
Kudankulam, about 100 kilometres from the port city of Tuticorin in the state of Tamil Nadu at the southern tip of India, is already home to two operating Russian-VVER 1000 pressurised water reactors: Kudankulam 1 has been in commercial operation since 2014 and Kudankulam 2 since 2017.
Four more VVER units are currently under construction in two phases: construction of units 3 and 4 began in 2017, with work on units 5 and 6 beginning in 2021. Two further units - Kudankulam 7 and 8, larger AES-2006 units with VVER-1200 reactors - have been proposed as the fourth phase of the plant.
