Friday, September 19, 2014

China joins nations eyeing India's civil nuclear sector

Meanwhile, where energy has the potential to enrich hundreds of millions of lives...

China joins nations eyeing India's civil nuclear sector - Yahoo News UK:
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - China became the latest nation to line up for a stake in India's civil nuclear energy drive on Thursday, agreeing to open talks on cooperation in a sector that New Delhi sees as the solution to its chronic power problems.
..."I think the Chinese are looking basically at the commercial angle, since India is going to be giving contracts for nearly $150 billion in the next 10-15 years," said Srikanth Kondapalli, a China watcher at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The announcement, made after Xi met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, comes on the heels of a deal India struck earlier this month to buy uranium from Australia to increase its fuel supplies.
Days before that, Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to accelerate talks on a nuclear energy pact.
Nuclear power, which currently accounts for just 3 percent of India's output, is key to future energy plans in India, where a quarter of the 1.2 billion population has little or no access to electricity.
Read the entire Reuters article. which ends:
Broader nuclear cooperation in Asia has in the past been hampered by geopolitical tensions, said Rajiv Nayan, a senior research associate at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.
The U.S.-India deal irked both Pakistan, India's nuclear-armed neighbour, and China, which saw it as an attempt by Washington to counteract Beijing's growing influence in the region.
Last year, China committed $6.5 billion to finance the construction of two nuclear reactors in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, and the two nations are in conversation about building three more plants, according to a Pakistani official.
With China recently signing deals in Romania and Argentina (both likely to be CANDUs), as well as apparently expanding in Pakistan, last year's irker may be this year's irked.

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