The Hindu Business Line : NFC bags Rs 100-cr orders from new generation reactors

THE Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) has secured orders worth over Rs 100 crore to supply critical components and systems within the next two years, to the newer generation reactors such as the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) and the upscaled 540-MW Tarapur Atomic Power Station (3&4), being built by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).

The NFC will fabricate and supply 5000 seamless steel tubes, each of 23-metre length to go into the steam generators for the 500-MW PFBR, being constructed in Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu. Work on this nuclear power project began very recently and the reactor is expected to go critical in 2009.

According to Mr R. Kalidas, Chairman & Chief Executive of NFC, the Hyderabad-based key supplier of fuel and reactor components to the country's nuclear power programme, the prototypes of the 9 chrome-1 molybdinum tubes have been evaluated and found suitable for the nine steam generators to be constructed in the PFBR.

In addition, it will supply stainless steel tubes of hexagonal shape and fuel and blanket assembly tubes for the PFBR. This would be a continuing order in the country's Fast Breeder Programme, which is expected to lead towards the use of thorium (widely found in India) as the fuel (current reactors use uranium) in future reactors, Mr Kalidas told Business Line in an interview.

In a development that is expected to accelerate the futuristic, Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AWHR), the Nuclear Fuel Complex has fabricated for the first time in the world, a prototype coolant tube, which varies in diameter and wall thickness along its length.

The 5.78-metre long seamless zircalloy tube has several advantages. Its design allows for vertical insertion and removal in the reactor core (in current reactors, the coolant tubes are placed horizontally), ensures minimal deposition of zircalloy, which in turn leads to neutron economy. For most efficient power generation, no material other than uranium, the fuel element is desirable in the reactor core, he explained.

The seamless tube technology-based coolant tube would be evaluated in the AWHR, which is claimed to one of the safest design, with inbuilt security features and under advanced stage of development at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai.

Seamless tubes have no joints along its length, and the NFC has mastered this technology to fabricate tubes of sizes ranging from 4 mm to 219 mm diameter and 0.2 mm to 55 mm wall thickness. The products are finding applications in chemical, industrial, engineering industries, he said.

While meeting the entire nuclear fuel supply needs of the network of power stations of the Nuclear Power Corporation, it has delivered strategic systems to the space and defence sectors as well. For the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), it has supplied the titanium-aluminium-vanadium alloy tubes, which cannot be imported, Mr Kalidas said.

For the 540-MW Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) 3 &4, where construction work is in full swing, the NFC has supplied more than 340-km length of precision instrumentation tubes. Guide tube assemblies, injection tube assembly, carrier tube assembly and three compartment liquid zone control unit of 13.5-metre length have been fabricated and supplied, the Chief Executive said.

To meet the expanding nuclear power programme of the DAE, the NFC is strengthening its plant capacities. It plans to leverage its strengths to become versatile and position itself as a national facility for the manufacture of critical products, Mr Kalidas said.