The US and India on Friday formally signed an agreement on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel that US officials hope would allow US firms a share of India’s US$150 billion nuclear energy market.
The agreement, signed by US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns and Indian Ambassador to the US H.E. Meera Shankar, will enable Indian reprocessing of US-originated nuclear material under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
It is part of the two countries’ 2008 bilateral civilian atomic pact that ended India’s nuclear isolation after its 1974 atomic test. The pact gave India access to US technology and fuel, while also opening up the global nuclear market to India.
“Increased civil nuclear trade with India will create thousands of new jobs for the US economy while helping India to meet its rising energy needs in an environmentally responsible way by reducing the growth of carbon emissions,” the US Department of State said in a press release.
The pact is expected to enter into force early this month, but a hurdle remains before US firms are expected to begin participating in the Indian nuclear market.
US firms are reluctant to do business in India without legislation that underwrites their compensation liability in the case of industrial accidents.
Legislation to limit nuclear firms’ liability in the case of industrial accidents has stalled in the Indian parliament, though it has been cleared by the Cabinet.
Opposition parties seek to put a maximum liability of about US$450 million on the state-run reactor operator without placing any compensation burden on private suppliers and contractors.
India has offered to tender construction of two nuclear power plants, a business opportunity worth US$10 billion, to US-based firms such as General Electric Co and Westinghouse Electric Co, a subsidiary of Japan’s Toshiba Corp.
However, the liability issue has put US firms at a competitive disadvantage over Russian and French firms, whose accident liability is underwritten by their governments. The Russian and French have already been awarded contracts.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS