REUTERS

Patriarch of the nuclear family: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

India’s desperate pursuit of nuclear energy will be expensive and risky. Small wonder industry wants to dilute its liability

Under the winter sky of January flamboyant French President Nicolas Sarkozy sat next to Indian President Pratibha Patil and watched the Republic Day parade last year. Eight months later India and France shook hands to sign an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. Business followed diplomacy. French company Areva agreed to set up two nuclear reactors in India and supply fuel for them.

This year the chief guest at the Republic Day function was Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, an unfamiliar face in India. Kazakhstan has one of the largest uranium ore reserves. It has joined the list of India’s nuclear friends. Last month it was Mongolia, another uranium-rich country.

Other countries that have signed civil nuclear agreements with India in the past 18 months are usa, South Korea and Russia.

“Diplomatic ties should be made with any big or small country with resources and that includes the 45 nations in the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” said T P Sreenivasan, former governor for India at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Ever since the Indo-US nuclear deal signed in October last year lifted 34-year-old global sanctions that denied India access to the international atomic energy market, including uranium, Delhi has been on a shopping spree, buying nuclear fuel and reactors (see India goes shopping ).

When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Delhi in July this year, India said thank you for lifting sanctions by assuring usa a deal to set up two nuclear power plants, in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.

India wants to expand its nuclear power by 15 times (from 4,120 MW to 63,000 MW) by 2032, according to the Planning Commission’s 2006 integrated energy policy report.

•  India goes shopping  •  Liability regimes

In terms of the percentage of the total energy mix, the nuclear share will double from 3 per cent to 6 per cent. “We hope to touch 7,000 MW by next year,” said S K Jain, chairman and managing director of India’s public sector nuclear utility Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (npcil).

Hopeful of resumption of uranium supplies, the Atomic Energy Commission, that governs India’s nuclear sector, launched four 700-MW nuclear reactors in August.

npcil has signed an agreement for another 2,000-MW nuclear plant. India has 17 functional nuclear reactors and five are near completion.

Till a few years ago, nuclear energy was dirty business, fraught with risks and cost overruns. But growing concern over global warming has conferred upon it respectability overnight since carbon emissions from nuclear power plants are negligible. The nuclear industry has even coined a phrase for the change in sentiments: nuclear renaissance.

“For us it is not renaissance; we never stopped in our endeavour for nuclear energy,” said Jain. The world’s nuclear suppliers had imposed sanctions on India after the Pokhran blast in 1974, stopping uranium supplies for its reactors. The uranium ore in India is of poor quality and it was running its nuclear power plants at 50 per cent capacity. “But the India-US deal will give us the opportunity to meet our targets,” said Jain.

The ultimate goal is to reach a stage where India can use its abundantly available nuclear fuel, thorium. That is the third stage of India’s three-stage nuclear programme formulated 50 years ago by nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha, who had established the Atomic Energy Commission.