Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar may have typically understated the NSG waiver as an “important breakthrough” and proponents of nuclear self-reliance treated it as inevitable but for India’s secretive nuclear establishment in Mumbai, crossing the hurdle on Saturday brought a huge sense of relief and quiet jubilation.

The NSG waiver to India marks the end of the technology denial regime that crippled the country’s nuclear power programme. Here is what can potentially change with the NSG waiver:

• Seventeen existing reactors which had an average plant load factor (PLF) of 54 per cent in 2007-08, the lowest in ages, will get access to imported uranium to overcome the shortage of indigenous fuel.

• Arrival of imported fuel will allow the firing of three new reactors—the 220 MW Kaiga-4 and the 220 MW RAPP 5 and 6 in Rawatbhata, Rajasthan, which have been stuck for want of uranium. Two 700 MW units are to come up in Kakrapar in Gujarat and two more in Rawatbhata.

• Expansion of the Kudankulam Atomic Power Project in Tamil Nadu, which India is building in collaboration with Russia. While two 1,000 MW reactors are being built there at present, New Delhi and Moscow are keen to expand the agreement into a “Kudankulam Plus” deal to set up four more reactors.

• India will have access to Canada’s CANDU reactors that allow the breeding of thorium directly instead of depending on homegrown breeder reactors to realise the goal of achieving it by 2010.

... contd.