The regulator is also planning to levy a licence fee as well as charge for other services to be financially self-sufficient.

“Every nuclear power plant in India has to renew its operational licence once in five years. With the accident in Fukushima reactors in Japan, additional safety measures have been suggested. The NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd) has to give us the road map for implementing the same,” SS Bajaj, chairman of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), said in an interview.

As a result, two of NPCIL’s power stations – Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) and the first two units at Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) – are being issued limited period licence to operate since December 31, 2010, and March 31, 2011, when their licence came up for renewal.

“The AERB does not give operational licence for the full life of the reactor. Every five years, we have to give integrated data on the reactors. We have given the data for TAPS 1 and 2. At TAPS, we have implemented the recommended short-term safety measures and the long term which involves civil construction activities will take some more time,” SA Bharadwaj, director (Technical) at NPCIL, said. Krishnamurthy said the post-Fukushima safety measures could be divided into short- and long-term measures.

“We are in the process of acquiring seismic trips, diesel gensets and others. The short- term measures will be completed over the next eight months. Long-term measures include setting up new equipments and beefing up the physical security of mobile assets like diesel gensets, building of additional water and diesel storage facilities,” Krishnamurthy remarked. “In 18 months, the recommended short- and long-term safety measures would be completed at all our units,” Bharadwaj said.

Speaking about the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) where hot run (trial run with dummy fuel) of the reactor was completed and the project has come to a standstill due to people’s protests, Bajaj said: “They now have to submit the test results. Based on that, we will authorise removal of dummy fuel.”

According to Bajaj, the AERB is also mulling to levy licence fee and charge for its other services so as to be financially self-sufficient as it is on the verge of being converted into an autonomous regulator. “We have to evolve a formula on which licence fees are charged. This will be done after getting the feedback from stakeholders. Perhaps in one year’s time we will be able to levy our fees,” Bajaj said.

He said the AERB’s annual budget is around Rs 25-30 crore and its revenue is almost nil. “We have around 230 employees and plans are there to increase the numbers as more atomic power stations are coming up,” Bajaj said. The regulator does not see any issue in having mega nuclear parks housing multiple units, provided sufficient safety measures are installed.

Queried about drafting safety codes for different kinds of nuclear power reactors (pressurised heavy water reactors, light water reactors, and fast reactors) that are being set up in India, Bajaj said: “At the highest level, the safety codes are similar. When we come down, we apply our codes and, where it is not possible, use international standards.”

On the fresh challenges to be faced on becoming an autonomous regulator under the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Act, Bajaj said: “Even now, the AERB is independent with none of its decisions questioned. Further, its budget too was not questioned.”
Agencies

The foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector was intended to re-energise Dr. Singh’s second term in office and would have helped the Indian economy which is witnessing a downslide.

The failure of the Manmohan Singh government to get the reform in retail implemented will not only undermine efforts to revive growth and curb inflation, but has also dealt a serious blow to the leadership of the prime minister. Dr. Singh will be off to Russia on a 3-day trip from December 15 while Japanese Premier Yoshihiko Noda is visiting India in the last week of December. The prime minister wants to use both opportunities to negotiate nuclear cooperation pacts.

Despite the delay in the scheduled commissioning of the first two reactors at Koodankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu due to protests, Dr. Singh is expected to sign new contracts for the third and fourth reactors at the same site during his visit.
Papers are also being prepared to sign a civil nuclear cooperation pact with Japan to import nuclear technologies that were put on hold following Fukushima Daiichi power plant crisis that was caused by a tsunami and earthquake on March 11 this year. Sources said increase in the number of nuclear plants in the country is on the top of Dr. Singh’s agenda in dealing with all nuclear power nations, as he knows that is the only way India can meet its growing energy needs.

Russia has been helping India in the field of nuclear power even before the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) granted a clean waiver to it in September 2008. The Koodankulam project, where the two reactors were supposed to be commissioned before the PM’s Russia trip, was conceived and its construction started much before the waiver came.

The agreement for the two reactors was signed back in 1988 when there was no civil nuclear liability law in the country and hence the protesters assert that this law enacted only last year may now cover any mishap.

The state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), which is the only agency allowed to produce the nuclear power, has developed two reactors of one gigawatt (GW) each at Koodankulam with the assistance of Russia’s Atomstroyexport. Sources say Russia is quite keen to expand the capacity of the project by installing six reactors at the site and also supply the enriched uranium for them. As such, it will seek an assurance from Dr. Singh on the future of the Koodankulam project.

Other issues that may come up for negotiation and agreement during Dr. Singh’s Russia visit include the military aviation need for attack helicopters, a joint venture for steel production in India, banking, science and technology cooperation. As regards the nuclear deal with Japan during its premier’s visit to Delhi, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna has already done foundation work during his Tokyo visit in October, hoping that the nuclear accord will materialise sooner rather than later.
The actual negotiations with Japan had begun in June last year, and three rounds of talks had already taken place before the Fukushima disaster put a brake on further talks. Other issues that may figure in the two primer ministers’ will be common expression of concern over the Chinese military activities in the region, sources said.
Agencies

Stating this in the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha on the issue of protest against setting up of nuclear plant at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office V Narayanasamy said the Government is also conscious of its corporate social responsibility.

He said the Government is building schools, roads and hospitals for people living in the vicinity of mega power projects and also reaching out to them so as to allay their apprehensions.

As regards nuclear energy, he said it is cheaper than several non-conventional energy sources and said several countries were going ahead with nuclear power plants.

Citing the example of China, the Minister said the eastern neighbour will have the capacity to produce more than 50,000 MW of nuclear energy in the next few years.

Replying to another supplementary, he said most of the nuclear power plants in Japan were running. “I have no knowledge of 10 nuclear plants been closed down. The safety measures of some of them are being upgraded after Fukushima (Tsunami) incident,” he said.
The Pioneer

The issue which has been a matter of contention due to India’s nuclear liability law is expected to dominate the discussions that Burns will have with Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai and with other officials.

Sources pointed out that despite strong reservations on this issue, after the Indian Government issued the Gazette notification last month, the Obama Administration has decided to not to come out with its view. India and the US appear to have agreed to avoid finger-pointing in public on the contentious nuclear liability issue and are internally working to find out a common ground.

The consequence of the new approach is that the US government has officially held off any public comment on the Implementation Rules, preferring to work with India through quiet diplomacy.

In fact, there is no consensus both inside the US Government and the American corporate sector on how to respond to this nuclear issue, said a nuclear expert who is intimately knowledgeable about the situation and regularly interacts with government officials in the US and India, involved in negotiating on this subject, as well as with US nuclear industry and legal community.

“The US and India are trying to find a common ground to keep the hopes of civil nuclear commerce between the two countries alive,” said the expert who requested anonymity given the sensitive nature of the ongoing negotiations.

It is learnt that the American corporate sector recently submitted to the State Department its viewpoint on India’s Gazette notification.
Agencies

“The completion cost is now expected to be Rs 15,824 crore and the project is expected to be completed in 2012-13,” they added. The delay has been attributed to various reasons including delivery schedule of certain components from Russia and the ongoing protests in Kudankulam against the nuclear power plant.

The total expenditure on the project till September this year has been Rs 14,122 crore. As per the original plan, the first unit was to be commissioned in December 2007, which was revised to mid-2010. This was further revised to September 2011 when the anti-nuclear protests broke out in Kudankulam.

The first Inter-Governmental Agreement for setting up two 1000 MW light water reactors was signed between India and the erstwhile USSR in 1988. A supplement to the agreement was signed with the Russian Federation in 1998. The ground breaking for the Kudankulam project took place in September 2001 and the first pour of concrete took place in March 2002.

NPCIL and Russia’s Atomstroy Export formally inked a deal for building two more civil nuclear reactors of 1,000 MW each at Kudankulam last year. A total of 12 Russian nuclear power reactors are expected to come up in India of which six would be built between 2012 and 2017.
Agencies

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had pushed for the scrapping of the ban on exports to the nuclear power, which is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to help meet its energy needs. “This will be a deeply significant decision so far as our strategic relationship with India is concerned,” Smith told Sky News.

Smith said he had no qualms about the prospect of exporting uranium to the South Asian nation, which has fought three wars with neighbour Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947. “This will advance Australia’s interests,” he told ABC television.

Fast-growing India is a key trade partner for Australia and the two countries agreed in 2009 to upgrade their relationship to a “strategic partnership” involving greater security co-operation. Australia’s governing Labor party voted Sunday to lift a long-standing ban on exporting uranium to India after a passionate debate about nuclear weapons and reactor safety following Japan’s atomic crisis.

Gillard said it was not rational to sell uranium to powers such as China but not India, “the world’s largest democracy”. New Delhi welcomed the development Monday. “Bilateral cooperation in the energy sector is one of the important facets of our multifaceted ties with Australia. We welcome this initiative,” External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna told reporters.

Canberra ships nuclear fuel to China, Japan, Taiwan and the United States but had refused to sell it to India because it is not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.

But Smith said while India had made it clear it would not sign the treaty, it had entered into a civil nuclear agreement with the United States in 2005, which was approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“That effectively put India under the international nuclear regulators for the first occasion and India gave a series of undertakings including a moratorium on future nuclear testing,” Smith said.

“That effectively gives you the same protections that you get if a country signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which, of course, has been the stumbling block for many years as far as India is concerned.” Sales to India will be regulated by strict safeguards, which Canberra and New Delhi are expected to start discussing in 2012, Trade Minister Craig Emerson said.

“There’s no doubt that India wants to use uranium for peaceful purposes,” Emerson told ABC Radio. “It’s entered into agreements with other countries that confirm this.” Although Australia does not use nuclear power itself, it is the world’s third-ranking uranium producer behind Kazakhstan and Canada and holds an estimated 23 percent of the world’s reserves.
Agencies

External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna said that the government welcomes the initiative of Australia’s Labor Party. “It is learnt that the Australian Labour Party agreed today, to allow sale of uranium to India for power generation. Bilateral cooperation in the energy sector is one of the important facets of our multifaceted ties with Australia. We welcome this initiative,” Krishna said on his way to Bonn to attend the conference on Afghanistan, according to the ministry of external affairs.

Australia’s ruling party passed a motion to remove a ban on uranium exports to India after a passionate debate on the issue that saw sharp divisions in the cabinet. The party had imposed the ban on export to non-signatories of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) like India four decades back.

Labor delegates voted to overturn the uranium export sale ban after a passionate debate in the national conference being held in Sydney. While 216 delegates voted in favour of uranium export to India, 185 Labor representatives expressed opposition to any such move.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had urged that Australia should sell uranium to India to boost trade and also to enhance bilateral ties. “We are at the right time in the history of the world to seize a new era of opportunity in this, the Asian century,” she said while addressing the Labor National Conference Sunday.

Gillard had told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their meeting on the sidelines of ASEAN and East Asia Summit that she would take forward her proposal to lift ban on uranium sales to India.
Agenices

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Australia, Abdul Malik Abdullah, said if Australia is willing to export uranium to India then it should sell it to Pakistan as well.

“If Australia is going to lift the ban on a country which has not signed NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) it is much hoped that will also apply to Pakistan the same way,” Abdullah was quoted as saying by ‘The Australian’ newspaper today. Labor Party yesterday voted to overturn a decades-old ban on uranium sale to India, paving the way for Canberra to supply yellowcake to a nation outside the NPT.

Abdullah said Pakistan has not made a request to buy Australian uranium but this could change in the future. “In that case we will hope that we will also be treated at par with other non-NPT signatories,” he said.

Interestingly, Julia Gillard had recently asked Pakistan to do more to combat terrorism and extremism.Noting that Pakistan would have the largest Muslim population by the middle of the century and also had nuclear weapons, Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith has said Pakistan government and parliament did not publicly support terrorism or extremism, but there was a risk some officials, or former officials, might, hence Australia’s call for Pakistan to be more vigilant.

“We don’t have rose-coloured glasses about the complexity or the difficulties of Pakistan, but we strongly believe that Australia and the rest of the world needs to engage with Pakistan,” he said.

The report noted that Smith has used his powers under the Weapons of Mass Destruction (Prevention of Proliferation) Act to block exports to Pakistan three times in the past two years, acting on intelligence that suggested Australian goods and services might be misused.

In 2010, the minister intervened to block a contract between an Australian company and a Pakistan-based company for the supply of scientific instruments. For the first time under the Act, Smith’s prohibition notice also extended to any training provided to the Pakistan-based company.

This year, Smith has blocked exports of scientific equipment and industrial equipment to Pakistan. Pakistan is being dealt with under the Act in much the same was as Iran was dealt with before tougher UN sanctions were imposed.

India has only come to the attention of the Act once, in 2005, in relation to a planned export of scientific equipment. The report said Australian government would be now preparing to negotiate a bilateral nuclear safeguards agreement with their Indian counterparts, after the 46th  ALP conference yesterday. Negotiations with India, to begin in the new year, are likely to take at least 12 months.
Agencies

“People agree to the fact that there is a crisis but they lack unanimity on how to solve it,” Venugopal told a workshop yesterday. Though everybody agrees on the need to raise power generation to meet the growing demand, they are apprehensive about harnessing nuclear resources fearing it may not be safe, he said at a workshop on “Radiochemistry and application of “Radioisotopes” organised by Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), run by the Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan Deemed to be University, in collaboration with IANCAS here.

Venugopal former director, Radiochemistry and Isoptope group at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, said concerns expressed on safety aspects of nuclear power plants country had to be addressed as it was important to tap all possible sources of energy. “The issues being raised against nuclear power stations, as witnessed in Jaitapur and Koodankulam, stemmed from reported nuclear mishaps at the Three Miles Island in the US, Chernobyl in Russia and more recently the incident at Fukushima in Japan following the “Tsunami”, he said.

Pointing out that India’s total power genreatin has risen from a meagre 2000 mw at the time of independence to 1,70,000 mw today, Venugopal said all energy sources needed to be tapped to raise generation but only thermal, hydel and nuclear could be harnessed in a big way.

Burning coal to generate thermal power is being seen as a threat to environment because of the green house effect, while large hydel projects are facing huge impediments. Advocating the case of nuclear power, Venugopal said such plants have a superior safety record compared to other major energy sources.

According to him, they don’t emit green house gases, are virtually pollution free and the fuel needed will be available for centuries. Besides, the cost of nuclear power will be competitive while the waste can be securely managed in the long term. It is fossil fuel and not nuclear power that raises an insoluble waste problem, he said.

Pointing out that the global nuclear industry having 436 operating reactors reported only one serious accident in 10,000 reactor years of operational time, Venugopal said nuclear plants have adopted the most stringent safety measures.

“Radiation has always been part of the natural environment and the benefits of the use of radiation and radioactive materials under controlled conditions greatly outweigh the risks,” he said.
Agencies

“Australia would be in breach of the so-called Rarotonga Treaty, if India does not change its stand,” Donald Rothwell of Australian National University said in a written legal opinion.

The Rarotonga Treaty bans uranium sales to most countries unless they agree to “full-scope safeguards” defined by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The uranium sale policy is said to be the hot topic of discussions at this week’s national conference of Australian Labor Party in Sydney. The Labor Party will debate on lifting its long standing ban on uranium sale to India.

“If India does not agree to Article 3.1 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards and Australia were to export uranium to India, Australia would be in violation of its Treaty of Rarotonga obligations,” Rothwell was quoted as saying by ‘Herald Sun’.

This could lead to a challenge from other countries that are part of the treaty, he added. Australia is not saying India shouldn’t be subject to safeguards. The real question is the extent and scope of the safeguards. India would need to sign up to full-scope safeguards that would require it to open military facilities.

He said India ratifying IAEA standards was “one step”.  All countries – apart from the five nuclear powers recognised in 1967 as weapons states (China, France, Russia, Britain and the US) – are required to “not only have open inspections of civil facilities but any military facilities that use nuclear material.

“The five nuclear weapons states aren’t required and that is the crux of why India thinks the NPT is discriminatory,” Rothwell said.

Australia’s nuclear agreements with Russia and China do not require the same level of safeguards as these countries were recognised as “nuclear weapon states” by the NPT. Rothwell said answers by the then foreign minister Alexander Downer on the question of export of Uranium to Taiwan in 1996 indicated that the federal government had received legal advice on its Rarotonga Treaty obligations when exporting to countries classified as “non-nuclear weapons states” by the NPT.

Downer, at the time had told Parliament: “The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty imposes a legal obligation not to provide nuclear material unless subject to the safeguards required by Article 3.1 of the NPT; that is full-scope safeguards.”

Yesterday, Austrailan Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s office said it didn’t comment on the legal advice it received. “The Prime Minister, as leader of the Labor Party, is seeking to change the party platform to allow the sale of uranium from Australia to India. Any decision by the Australian government on the transfer of uranium to India will comply with our international treaty obligations,” said a spokesman for Gillard.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has earlier announced her plans to push her party to agree to change its stand to allow sales of uranium to India, which she has said would create jobs in Australia and would still have safeguards attached.

A vote will be put to members at the party’s national conference this weekend. Tim Wright, the Australian director of ICAN, said the Prime Minister had failed to consult her lawyers.

“Not only is the sale of uranium to India illegal, it is also highly dangerous given that India is rapidly bolstering its nuclear forces,” Wright said.
Agencies