The signing ceremony took place as part of the 18th Annual Russian-Indian Summit organized on the margins of the Saint-Petersburg International Economic Forum. Kudankulam Stage III includes the construction of Units 5 and 6 in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The parties also signed a credit protocol required to move ahead with the project. The set of documents for Stage III provides for obligations of the Parties, price and other material terms and conditions of cooperation between the parties. The agreement was signed by Valery Limarenko, President of ASE Group (a general contractor for the Kudankulam NPP project), and Shri Satish Kumar Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL).

“We signed extremely important documents that we had worked on hard for the last few months. All formalities have been satisfied thus far to finally kick off the construction of two Russian-designed power units at Kudankulam. I am pleased to say that the project has therefore entered into an active phase. We fully appreciate our joint efforts in the construction of the Kudankulam NPP in Tamil Nadu,” said Valery Limarenko, President of ASE Group.

As he later told the Russian news agency TASS, Units 5 and 6 are scheduled to be commissioned in 2024 and 2025 respectively. “The total capacity of the two new units will be 2 GW. Unit 5 will be brought online in 2024, to be followed by Unit 6 in 2025,” he said. He also added that Rosatom hoped for broader engagement of Indian companies in the third stage of the Kudankulam project. Commenting on the differences of Stage III (Units 5 and 6) from the earlier constructed units, Limarenko explained, “Kudankulam power units [Stage III] are different for those constructed before in local content. We hope to work more closely with Indian companies. As for the third stage of the project, we are talking about the nuclear and turbine islands worth nearly 4 billion US dollars.

For reference

Rosatom built and commissioned the first two units of the nuclear power plant. Construction of Units 3 and 4 was started after the Indian nuclear regulator issued a relevant permit in January 2016. On-site work has begun; plans are to pour the first concrete in late June 2017. The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is based on the design developed by Rosatom’s subsidiary AtomEnergoProekt. Featuring VVER-1000 reactors, the design fully complies with the latest technical regulations of the IAEA and Russian Federation and is certified to the European Utility Requirements (EUR) for LWR Nuclear Power Plants.