L&T Heavy Engineering has successfully flagged off its first consignment of Cryostat, part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion reactor facility being built at Cadarache in South of France.
This is the first HEL (Heavy Exceptional Load) consignment of ITER program being dispatched to France with a total consignment weight of 460 MT. When complete, ITER will be the world's largest experimental facility to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power.
An international collaborative project, ITER involves ''in-kind'' contributions from seven member entities viz., European Union, India, China, Japan, S. Korea, Russia and USA. ITER India, which is a part of the Institute for Plasma Research (a DAE Unit) located at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, is the nodal agency responsible for the Indian portion of the project, which awarded L&T the contract for manufacturing the Cryostat.
In the second phase, module pre-assembly will be done at site workshop at Cadarache, already constructed by L&T and handed over to ITER in November 2014. The third phase involves final assembly of the Cryostat where the installation will be done at the Tokomak Reactor Hall.
The successful dispatch of the first segments is a testimony to L&T's proven capability in hi-tech manufacturing and highlights India's growing prominence in nuclear sector.
Shares of the company declined Rs 23.95, or 1.49%, to settle at Rs 1,580.65. The total volume of shares traded was 115,254 at the BSE (Monday).