Contract Signed On RAPP 7 and 8 Nuclear Power Plants In India. [View All]

[NNadir]

Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) will undertake main plant civil works of units 7 and 8 of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP) after a Rs8880 million ($188 million) contract by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL).

RAPP 7 and 8 will be 700 MWe indigenously designed pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs). The units are scheduled to begin commercial operation in June and December 2016, respectively. HCC has constructed all six existing units at RAPP, which are also PHWRs of varying sizes, the first of which began operating in 1973 and the latest earlier this year.

Under the latest contract, the scope of the work involves construction of the reactor buildings, auxiliary buildings and the waste management exhaust ventilation building...

The bold is mine, as is placed there to show what a nation with a nuclear infrastructure can do.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-HCC_awarded_contract_for_new_RAPP_units-2605106.html">Contract for Indian reactor components.

I personally regard the Indian Nuclear Power program to be one of the most innovative and exciting in the world, because of India's huge thorium resources, which India clearly intends to exploit. While the rest of the world is trying to wipe up its oil with Downey paper towels, India will come to possess the world's largest supply of U-233, which will place them in the cat bird seat for a huge portion of the 21st century.

The United States possesses about one ton of U-233, manufactured from thorium in the last half of the 20th century, some of it in our very first commercial nuclear reactor, Shippingport, which operated for about 3 years as a thermal breeder reactor during the Carter administration.

We're so wise here, that we're thinking of throwing it away.