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GE, Westinghouse Electric to Build Nuclear Plants in India

2010-09-05 The Financial Express reports that the General Electric and Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric could be the first overseas suppliers of nuclear plants and services. Estimated $200-250 billion business that India can offer to overseas suppliers of nuclear plants and services over the next two decades would go to four firms.

New Delhi has identified these firms and Paris-based Areva and Russia’s Rosatom as the first four to set up nuclear reactors in the country. The two reactors that GE and Westinghouse will build will have a combined cost of roughly $10 billion, official sources told FE.

Areva and Rosatom are already present in Indian nuclear energy market, while GE and Westinghouse are making the foray. Westinghouse, which is majority-owned by Japan’s Toshiba Corporation, has the world's largest installed base of operating nuclear plants.

According to sources, agreements with GE and Westinghouse are in the process of being firmed up ahead of the expected India visit of the US president Barack Obama in November. Obama’s visit will be followed by a visit by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and, later, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in December.

While the two US firms were keen to be suppliers for India’s nuclear reactor market, it was the liability issue that hindered their plans, putting them at a competitive disadvantage over Russian and French firms whose accident liability is underwritten by their governments. Now that the bill has become law, the US companies can start work on building reactors at least at two sites identified for them.

However, negotiations between India and Japan on the civil nuclear deal are going slow, despite efforts to reach some conclusions ahead of Prime minister Manmohan Singh's Tokyo visit in October.

The India-Japan nuclear deal has a lot riding on it. Besides the strong strategic statement, the deal will give top Japanese nuclear companies like Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Marubeni a foothold in the Indian nuclear energy sector. At least three of them have tied up with GE, Areva and Westinghouse respectively, all of whom have been allotted nuclear parks in India.

Sources clarified that even if the India-Japan agreement gets delayed, it will not have any effect on these joint ventures accessing Japanese technology for India’s reactors.

-- Financial Express

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