Obamas Visit to India to Benefit Westinghouse and General Electric for New Nuclear Power Plants

- Edited By Tom Lamar -
President Barack Obama’s visit to India has heightened expectations of Indian power and engineering companies who plan to participate in India’s nuclear growth story.
Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Tata Power, Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) and Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) are confident that the visit would pave way for an early agreement on fixing the compensation for civil nuclear incidents and other issues, which would allow private sector companies to progress on the memorandum of agreements signed after the India-US civil nuclear deal.
L&T, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Westinghouse Electric and General Electric, hopes the nuclear liability agreement would get ratified soon and help the company forge its capabilities in complete construction of nuclear power plants. MV Kotwal, head of defense and aerospace division at L&T said, “We think that Obama’s visit will help expedite the process of addressing the issues in due course.” However, he feels that US firms would have to compete with others worldwide for a share of this business.
L&T’s MOU with Westinghouse would involve work related to engineering, procurement, construction and manufacturing activities for the AP1000 modular nuclear reactors. It has another MOU with GE Hitachi for cooperation on developing components for advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) nuclear power plants.
NPCIL has already started work on two short-listed sites with an aggregate capacity of 10,000 mw. The reactors for the proposed plants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh have been reserved for supply by US companies, said a senior NPCIL official.
“We have already started work on two units of total six reactors to be supplied by Westinghouse and GE Hitachi over a period of time. We need around 600 hectares of land and the process of land acquisition has already started,” the NPCIL official said.
Tata Power that plans to have direct ownership of nuclear power plants believes that full private ownership may take time. Banmali Agrawala, executive director (corporate strategy) of Tata Power, said, “The nuclear liability issue once resolved would pave the way for Indian companies to tap the American market for technology and wider access to equipment. However, till that happens everything is tied to liability being fixed, as financing and funding would all have a direct recourse to the companies balance sheet,” said Agrawala.
India’s Parliament on August 25 passed the civil nuclear liability bill, fixing the compensation to be paid by the operators in case of any damage. However, the issues related to sovereign guarantee for liability of private US companies and the substitution of a governmental guarantee with that of a third party insurance company overseas, are still pending and are being discussed by the American government.
http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2010/11/08/obamas-visit-to-india-to-benefit-westinghouse-and-general-electric-for-new-nuclear-power-plants-110804.aspx