KAKRAPUR ATOMIC PLANT ATTAINS ITS CRITICALITY

Nuclear power plants are thermal power stations that generates electricity. The Atomic power station is a nuclear power station in India. Kakrapur Atomic Plant is one such plant. Four units of reactor’s are built up in Kakrapur and Rawatbhata. It is among the new fleet of 12 reactors which government approved a financial sanction in 2017. It is situated on the branch of river Tapsi. It is 80 Kms from Surat. Its one of the greatest thing occurred in India. Prime minister, Narendra Modi congratulated the scientists for this amazing achievement.

The Kakrapur Atomic plant -3 achieves its criticality. But that does not mean to have critical condition like eruption. Achieve criticality means to fire up a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction. Reactors are the vital component of an atomic power plant, where a controlled nuclear fission reaction occurs that produces heat, which is used to generate steam that then spins a turbine to generate electricity. Fission is a process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei along with some byproduct particles. When the nucleus splits, the kinetic energy of the fission fragments is pushed on to other atoms in the fuel as heat energy, which is used to produce steam to drive the turbines. For every fission event, if at least one of the emitted neutrons on average causes another fission. Its just a self-sustaining chain reaction. A nuclear reactor attains its criticality when every fission event discharges an acceptable number of neutrons to sustain an ongoing series of reactions. This incident took place on 22nd July, 2020 at 9:30 AM in the morning.

The first step for the plan was put up in November, 2010 and was expected to be commissioned in 2015. The real prize of two 700 MWe was summed up to Rs 11,500 crore.  The 700 Mega power plant achieved its protacality in Gujarat, means it achieved normal operating condition of reactor. It indicates that the plant is now ready to generate the power. Nation salutes the scientists for this great achievements. The power plant uses water as moderator and uranium as fuel for PHWR. The earlier designed biggest reactor was of 540 MWe which was located in Tarapur of Maharashtra state.

This is a benchmark event in the India’s  domestic civilian nuclear program .  Now nuclear power capacity is the hugest part of expansion idea.  Its the largest developed variant of Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor(PHWR).  It is now the single largest nuclear reactor in the country with the production capacity of 700MW. More of this is said to follow. 4th plant is setting ready in the future. It mark a significant scale-up in technology.