India and Japan hope to sign a nuclear energy agreement when Prime Minister Modi visits Japan this week. The agreement, the first by Japan with a country that has not ratified the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, will enable Japan to export its nuclear energy technology for private-sector use in India, reports Defense World.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had told Prime Minister Modi at a meeting in New Delhi in December 2015, “We will discontinue cooperation should India conduct a nuclear test,” newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported. Japan has long pushed for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
Bloomberg reports that India’s nuclear power market is estimated at $150 billion and the country aims to boost energy generated from atomic plants to a quarter of its the total by 2050 from about 3.5 percent now, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Westinghouse Electric, a Pennsylvania-based company owned by Toshiba, is building six reactors in India; however, this project isn’t contingent on the bilateral treaty between Japan and India, a Toshiba spokesperson said.
