According to Business Standard Toshiba Corporation’s Westinghouse Electric hopes to clinch a deal to build six nuclear reactors in India by end-March, CEO Daniel Roderick said, in time for a possible visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington to attend a global nuclear summit. A Westinghouse team was already in India to negotiate the deal, Roderick noted.
The proposed power plant in the western state of Gujarat will speed up India’s plans to build roughly 60 reactors and would give a boost to India’s $150-billion nuclear power program.
The ratification of the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage is expected within weeks, an Indian government official said.
India has launched an insurance pool with a liability cap of about $222 million to assuage suppliers’ concerns, after a 2010 law gave the state-run operator Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd., the right to seek damages from them in the event of an accident.
“We need to see the details of the insurance company and how the insurance will work at a level beyond what we have seen so far,” Roderick said in an interview. “And that needs to happen in the next 30 to 45 days.”
Roderick also remarked that if the GE-Hitachi deal did not eventually go through, Westinghouse would rather the Indian government gave it the site than to “Russia or somebody else”.
