The Hindu : National : It will be level-playing field for India: Jain

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It will be level-playing field for India: Jain

T.S. Subramanian

With NSG waiver, India can import Light
Water Reactors
It can also buy natural uranium for PHWRs

CHENNAI: S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), on Saturday said the NSG waiver would “definitely and clearly provide India with a level-playing field” in building nuclear power plants and obtaining the nuclear fuel, natural uranium, from abroad.

“We will be equal partners in the global nuclear supply chain.”

Mr. Jain said: “We had always felt we did not have a level-playing field for the source of nuclear energy and there were constraints that dictated the pace of our nuclear power programme. We felt shackled and stifled. The initiatives taken by the Government of India for the past three years have now made us part of the international nuclear community. We can now speed up our nuclear power programme.”

He called the NSG waiver “a momentous event” for the entire nuclear industry in India. “Not only the NPCIL but also the nuclear industry were hoping expectantly for this day to arrive.”

With the NSG waiver, India could import Light Water Reactors (LWRs) and enriched uranium to fuel them. Besides, India could buy natural uranium for its indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) of 220 MWe each that the country had agreed to put under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards. “So we will be in a position to accelerate our own PHWR programme and set up imported LWRs with a capacity of 1,000 MWe each and above,” Mr. Jain said.

(India is now starved of natural uranium, which has hobbled the functioning of the PHWRs. Their capacity factor has dropped to 50 per cent from more than 90 per cent three years ago).

On the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu, where two LWRS of 1,000 MWe each from Russia are under construction, the NPCIL Chairman said work was progressing fast so that the procedure for the first unit’s criticality including loading the enriched uranium fuel bundles into the reactor would start by 2008-end.

“We are hoping that some electricity from the first unit will flow into the grid by March 2009. The second unit will also be started up in 2009.”

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