The first consignment of enriched uranium fuel for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) arrived from the Russian Federation at the Thiruvananthapuram airport on Sunday night. S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), said on Monday that the first consignment formed part of the supply for the first unit of the project. The Russian Federation would continue to send the entire fuel needed for the two reactors coming up at the project site in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. "The enriched uranium fuel which arrived on Sunday night is in the form of the final fuel assembly. They are ready to be loaded into the reactor,' he said. In other words, they are in the form of fully fabricated fuel rods. They will form the initial charge for the reactor. "The fuel loading into the first unit will start in November-December 2008,' the NPCIL Chairman said. Asked when the first reactor would be commissioned, Mr. Jain responded from Mumbai: "This is the first of its kind. A lot of checks and tests are required. We do not want to hazard a guess. "We are on course for the commissioning of the first unit.' (Normally, it takes a few weeks for the reactor to attain criticality after the commencement of the loading of the fuel rods into a reactor). Two Russian reactors called VVER-1000 are being built at Kudankulam. Each reactor will generate 1,000 MWe. They will use enriched uranium as fuel, and light water as both moderator and coolant. While Russia is supplying the design and all the equipment for the two reactors, it is the NPCIL which is building the units. As per the technical cooperation between India and the Russian Federation, the latter will supply the enriched uranium fuel for the KKNPP reactors for their life time. In February 2008, an agreement for the construction of four more Russian reactors (units 3, 4, 5 and 6) at Kudankulam was signed. Asked about the delay of more than 18 months in the commissioning of the first unit due to the delay in the supply of equipment by the Russians, Mr. Jain said: "The project is running behind schedule. We are putting in our best efforts.' Eighty-six per cent of the construction of the first reactor had been completed. The second reactor would be commissioned six months after the first went on stream. On the fifth unit of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP) at Rawatbhatta and the fourth reactor of the Kaiga Atomic Power Project in Karnataka sitting idle for several months for want of natural uranium fuel, the NPCIL chairman said a piece of "good news' was that the new uranium mill at Turamdih in Jharkhand State had begun trial production. The mill, which would convert natural uranium ore into yellow cake through a series of chemical processes, had suffered teething problems after it was commissioned in June 2007. The yellow cake is fabricated into fuel rods which are fed into the reactor to generate electricity. Mr. Jain said: "The Turamdih mill has now stabilised and trial production has begun. We are hoping that the first portion of the trial production will be received in June. One month after that, regular production will begin. Accordingly, we will schedule the commissioning of the fifth unit at Rajasthan and the fourth at Kaiga.' This additional supply from Turamidh will also be useful when the second reactor at Rajasthan is started up in June. It has been shut down for replacement of feeder pipes. The Turamdih mill can process 3,000 tonnes of natural uranium ore a day. This is the second plant to be set up in India, after the first one at Jaduguda, also in Jharkhand, to process natural uranium into yellow cake. The yellow cake is fabricated into fuel rods at the Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad.