Thursday, 17 July 2025
The first nuclear power unit at the Rooppur nuclear power plant in Bangladesh is undergoing hot tests as the next stage of the commissioning process.
According to AtomStroyExport (ASE), part of Rosatom, “during the tests, the reactor unit is heated up, and our specialists check step-by-step how key elements operate under these conditions: pumps, pipelines, heat exchange equipment. It is important to record how the equipment behaves under load – after all, it will be the one that will ensure reliable operation of the plant later”.
The hot testing is designed as a general check of the reliability of the reactor unit “before moving on to the next, more important stages … and shows where the system is ready to function under conditions close to real operation”.
Leak tests on the containment building for Rooppur 1 were successfully completed last month.
Step-up transformers and auxiliary transformers were also commissioned for the unit at the end of June – the step-up transformers convert the voltage generated by the turbogenerator, 24 kV, into 400 kV to supply electricity to the national grid. They are capable of transmitting a total of up to 1599 MW of power, which is more than the 1200 MW capacity of the unit.
The Rooppur project
In February 2011 Russia’s Rosatom signed an agreement for two reactors to be built at Rooppur, about 160 kilometres from the capital Dhaka, for the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. The initial contract for the project, worth USD12.65 billion, was signed in December 2015. The Bangladesh Atomic Regulatory Authority issued the first site licence for the Rooppur plant in June 2016, allowing preliminary site works, including geological surveys, to begin.
Construction of the first unit began in November 2017. Construction of the second unit began in July 2018. They have an initial life-cycle of 60 years, with a further 20-year extension possible.
The first batch of nuclear fuel was delivered to the site in October 2023 – the moment that the site got its status as a nuclear facility. In March Rooppur unit 1’s turbine installation was completed, as were hydraulic tests to check the primary circuit systems and equipment, paving the way for hot functional tests to begin. Rosatom has included grid connection for Rooppur unit 1 as one of its key targets for the current year.
