Private N-plants only after players gain experience via NPCIL

New Delhi, Jan 8 (PTI) India may consider allowing
private players to set up nuclear power plants only after they
gain experience through collaborative projects with Nuclear
Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), a top India government
official said here Thursday.

Shyam Saran, Special Envoy to India's Prime Minister
on the Nuclear Deal told the Indo-US Economic Summit now in
progress in the city that private players can currently
examine participation in certain components of the nuclear
programme through the NPCIL.

"Once the private players gain experience in the
nuclear field, the government may consider allowing them to
establish nuclear plants of their own," he said.

Saran said for the last 40 years, the Indian nuclear
programme had both strategic and civilian compenents
intertwined in it and this has created a bottleneck for
private sector participation.

"Now India has prepared a separation plan, which
will be completed by 2014. Until a complete separation takes
place, bringing in private sector may create certain
difficulties," he said.

The government, Saran said, will soon amend the Atomic
Energy Act of 1962 to enable private participation in the
civil nuclear programme that the Act had originally barred.
He, however, did not elaborate by when the Act will be
amended.

"The government doesn't have a closed mind on private
participation in the nuclear programme. But the government is
cautious about it, as it is a sensitive subject. It will be a
while before private participation is allowed," he said.

He said India will scale up nuclear energy production
to 60,000 megawatts by 2030 after signing pending N-deals with
more countries.

"It is our expectation to achieve generation of 60,000
MW of nuclear energy by 2030. The earlier target was 20,000 MW
by 2020. The expectation has increased with the kind of
opportunities we are having now with more N-deals coming up
for signing," he told reporters on the sidelines of the
summit.

Saran said Kazakhstan, Russia and France have agreed
on nuclear collaboration with India and there is a letter of
intent for generation of 10,000 MW of nuclear power in
collaboration with the US.

"There are a large number of players and the capacity
is going to be large," he said.

The nuclear deal, the former Foreign Secretary said,
will allow fruitful partnership between Indian private
sector with foreign players and the spin-off will be
significant in dual-use technologies.

He said India will soon sign the international
convention on liability insurance and the matter will be taken
up by the Cabinet for a decision soon. However, he did not
elaborate on the issue.

The Special Envoy said the country will be able to
produce 10,000 MW of nuclear energy for the next 40 years if
it relied only on its own uranium reserves.

But, under the three-stage nuclear energy programme,
New Delhi would like to move to thorium-based reactors in the
third stage from the current uranium-based reactors.

He also hailed the Indo-US nuclear deal and the
45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group's waiver for opening up the
entire international market for India and for breaking the
shackles of the New Delhi-specific technology denial regimes.
PTI