Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plant

About Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plants:

• It is located at Gorakhpur village of Fatehabad district in Haryana, which is about 150 km north of the national capital.
• It will have two units of 700 MWe capacity each of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) indigenous design.

Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR)

• It is a nuclear power reactor, commonly using unenriched natural uranium as its fuel, that uses heavy water (deuterium oxide D2O) as its coolant and moderator.
• The heavy water coolant is kept under pressure, allowing it to be heated to higher temperatures without boiling, much as in a typical pressurized water reactor.
• While heavy water is significantly more expensive than ordinary light water, it yields greatly enhanced neutron economy, allowing the reactor to operate without fuel enrichment facilities (mitigating the additional capital cost of the heavy water) and generally enhancing the ability of the reactor to efficiently make use of alternate fuel cycles.

Q1) What is nuclear fission reaction?

Fission occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom, forcing it to excite and split into two smaller atoms—also known as fission products.

Source: Back Northern India’s first nuclear plant to come up in Haryana’s Gorakhpur: Jitendra Singh