By RIA Novosti
St. Petersburg : Moscow is seeking new contracts to continue civil nuclear construction work in India, Russia’s first deputy prime minister has said.
Russia has been building the 1,000 MW Kudankulam nuclear power plant in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state since 2002, and has already delivered two nuclear reactors to the facility.
“We expect contracts to build nuclear facilities at this location — in Kudankulam, as well as new ones,” Sergei Ivanov said Monday.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Moscow earlier this month said Russia and India were drawing up an agreement for construction of four more nuclear reactors in Kudankulam.
A memorandum on the project was signed during President Putin’s visit to India in January.
Atomstroyexport, Russia’s nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, is building the Tamil Nadu plant, in line with a 1988 agreement between India and the erstwhile Soviet Union, that was modified by an addendum ten years later with a Russian financing agreement.
A spokesman for Russia’s federal agency for nuclear power said in October that Russia could be very helpful to India in building fast neutron reactors for nuclear power plants if sanctions against New Delhi were lifted.
India has never been a party to the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and has been under US, Japan and European sanctions since 1998, when it detonated a nuclear device.
In January, Russia’s nuclear agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko had called for lifting the restrictions.
“Russia believes India has an unimpeachable reputation in the nuclear non-proliferation sphere, and therefore we are going to push for an end to corresponding sanctions against India,” he had said.