India and the US are close to inking a preliminary contract in connection with the proposed construction of six nuclear reactors by an American company in Mithi Virdi in Gujarat.
The government hopes to sign this contract prior to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s departure for the US on September 25 for the UN General Assembly session. He will be having a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama on September 27.
A note is ready for approval by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). Asked if the preliminary agreement between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) and Westinghouse Electric Company is close to being signed, national security adviser (NSA) Shivshankar Menon said on Friday, “Yes, we are very close.”
The cost of the initial pact has been pegged at $15.16 million and does not deal with “actual nuclear activities”.
The NSA, who was speaking on “India and the USA” at an event organised by Aspen Institute India, said India and the US have “resolved government-to-government permissions between NPCIL and Westinghouse and for the AERB to begin its independent evaluation of the safety of the power plant”.
Further, he said it’s been India’s “consistent stand that the power plant should meet the highest standards of safety, delivering power at a price that is competitive vis-à-vis other sources of energy”.
At the same time, the NSA, as well foreign secretary Sujatha Singh, allayed fears on a possible dilution of the country’s civil nuclear liability law saying there will be no such thing.
“Civil nuclear projects in India will naturally be subject to Indian law, including civil liability,” said Mr Menon.
The FS said, “There is no question of Indian law being diluted. that is the bottom line.”
The NSA also said that both domestic and foreign vendors have “sought clarifications on some points of that law which are being examined”.
The preliminary contract, as stated earlier by the Department of Atomic Energy earlier, will be for “a limited range of pre-project services” and will not bind the NPCIL to enter a contract with Westinghouse for getting nuke reactors without establishing safety and techno-commercial viability.
Apart from the PM’s upcoming US visit, what seems to have lent a sense of urgency to the move to sign the contract is that US secretary of state John Kerry, during his visit to India in June, had put a September time-frame for the commercial agreement to be signed between NPCIL and Westinghouse. This, however, is still some time away.
The talks to finalise a commercial pact have so far been bogged down by India’s civil nuclear liability law which provides for the NPCIL to seek partial compensation from suppliers in the event of their reactors being involved in a nuclear accident.