PM to inaugurate reactor pressure vessel installation at Rooppur Power Plant Unit-2

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the installation of a reactor pressure vessel at the second unit of the 2,400 MW Rooppur nuclear power plant (RNPP) on Wednesday amid high enthusiasm for the country's maiden nuclear power plant, officials say.

They say that the first unit of the project has already made 70 percent progress in terms of work. With the installation of the reactor pressure vessel at the second unit of the project, 53 percent of the work will be completed.

The country's lone nuclear power plant, being constructed at Ishwardi of Pabna at a total cost of US$ 12.65 billion, will have two units, each having 1200MW of power generation capacity.

Director General of Russia's Rosatom State Corporation Alexey Likhachev, who is scheduled to fly from Moscow to Dhaka, is expected to physically attend the event while the prime minister would join virtually from her official residence in Dhaka.

In October last year, the PM had inaugurated the reactor pressure vessel of the first unit.

"With the installation of the reactor pressure vessel, the project's second unit's physical work will achieve over 45 percent of the target", Dr Md Shawkat Akbar, the project director in the country's biggest scheme in power generation, told UNB.

The government undertook the project in 2009 and after a long discussion signed an $11.385 billion credit agreement with Russian Federation on July 26 in 2016 to implement the project through appointing the Russian state nuclear energy firm, Rosatom, as its contractor.

In addition, on August 6, 2019, Bangladesh signed a nuclear fuel supply agreement with Russia for the project.

Under the deal, the Russian state-owned nuclear fuel firm TVEL Joint Stock Company will supply nuclear fuel for the entire life span of the power plant.