The Hindu Business Line : Japanese companies keen on Indian nuclear market

New Delhi, Nov. 21 Despite the Japanese Government’s reluctance to commit on a nuclear pact with India, a high-level nuclear delegation from Japan, including representative from reactor majors Hitachi Ltd, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Toshiba Corporation, is slated to arrive in India on Sunday for talks with Department of Atomic Energy officials.

The delegation is likely to also meet the top-brass of state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd during its week-long visit to India, top Government officials said.

Japan is a repository of advanced civilian nuclear technologies and the three leading Japanese firms are key members of global reactor manufacturing alliances that are in the fray for new Light Water Reactor orders in India.

While Hitachi has a global alliance with General Electric Co for the nuclear power plant and services businesses, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has a partnership with France’s Areva.

Toshiba had earlier taken over US-reactor manufacturer Westinghouse Electric’s nuclear business.

India had formally sought a civilian nuclear agreement with Japan during Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to Tokyo in late-October but the Japanese Government stopped short of signing a pact with India in lieu of strong lobbying by the non-proliferation lobby in that country.

While France and the US have already entered into bilateral pacts with India for sharing civilian nuclear technology, Russia is already constructing two reactors in India and is in the fray for setting up four new ones.

Meanwhile, Russia signalled its intentions of broad-basing nuclear engagement with India by citing its willing to go beyond the construction of nuclear power stations to cooperate on uranium mining with India, Government officials involved in the exercise said.

Besides, joint nuclear equipment manufacturing as well as production of radioactive isotopes for use in medicine and manufacturing of high-tech equipment could be on the anvil, visiting Director General of Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation Mr Sergey Kiriyenko conveyed to the India side during his ongoing visit to India. Mr Kiriyenko’s visit comes in the run up to Russian President Mr Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India in December.

The Russian delegation arrived in India on November 19 for taking stock of the construction at the Koodankulam project (2x1000 MWe) and discussing possibilities of further cooperation in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Mr Kiriyenko had inspected the finished facilities at the construction site of Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant and also visited the land where Russia and India are planning to jointly build four additional reactors under their inter-governmental agreement initialled in February 2008.