India and Russia to expand civilian nuclear cooperation

BOTH NATIONS ARE PUSHING TOWARDS THE COMPLETION OF PHASE 1 OF THE 6,000MW KUDANKULAM NUCLEAR POWER PROJECT IN TN

- Shishir Gupta

India and Russia have decided to expand their civilian nuclear cooperation, with Moscow willing to share technology for a small modular reactor used in power generation, even as both sides are pushing towards the completion of Phase 1 the of 6,000MW Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, according to people familiar the matter. The small modular reactors – these are advanced nuclear reactors -- have a power generation capacity of 75MW to 300MW.

India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar completed his five days visit to Russia today, and the people cited above said that the two sides are pushing to commission Reactors 3 and 4 while speeding up the work on Reactors 5 and 6 at the Kudankulam nuclear project at a time when the US Westinghouse-supported 6,600MW Kovvada nuclear project and the French Areva-supported 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear project are stalled over price negotiations. Only Reactors 1 and 2 of Kudankulam are operational at the moment, providing 2,000MW of electricity to the country.