NFC & MIDHANI consortium flags off first consignment of tubes

They are critical components in new atomic reactors

NFC & MIDHANI consortium has bagged the prestigious order against global tender for supply of Incoloy-800 (UNS N08800) - U Bend Steam Generator (SG) tubes for the upcoming 700 MWe Pressurised Heavy-Water Reactors (PHWR) for Gorakhpur Anu Vidyut Pariyojana (GHAVP) from BHEL. These tubes were manufactured with complete indigenous technology starting from raw material supplied by MIDHANI to the finished tubes developed and manufactured at NFC under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission. First set of SG tubes consisting of 2,489 tubes of 26 m length U-bend in 72 different bend radii against stringent quality specifications was dispatched on Saturday with the NFC chief executive Dinesh Srivastava and MIDHANI chairman & managing director S.K. Jha flagging off the consignment. The critical equipment required for manufacturing these tubes was indigenously developed and deployed for production. The supply of the balance two sets of tubes to BHEL for this order is being planned in this calendar year. NFC is one of the limited suppliers with the capability to manufacture these tubes required for critical application in nuclear power generation. NFC has also received an order from NPCIL to supply 40 sets of tubes (one lakh tubes) for forthcoming 10 reactors to be set up by NPCIL under fleet mode. The process of manufacturing these tubes for fleet reactors will commence shortly at NFC which had previously supplied 20,000 tubes in 2015-16 for Kakrapur Atomic Power Plant (KAPP 3&4) and Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (RAPP) 7&8 which were processed with imported raw material. In the present order, the raw material was also manufactured indigenously.