14 Mar (NucNet): The US and India have signed an agreement confirming their commitment to cooperate on the civilian use of nuclear energy including a proposed construction of six US-supplied nuclear power plants in the Asian country, a statement by the US Department of State said.
The statement said that India’s foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale and US undersecretary of state Andrea Thompson signed the agreement in Washington yesterday, but gave no further details about the nuclear power plant project.
Former US president Barack Obama and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced in 2016 that engineering and design work would begin for Westinghouse to build six AP1000s in India in a deal that was expected to be signed by June 2017.
The agreement was the result of a decade of diplomatic efforts as part of a US-India civil nuclear agreement signed in 2008.
In April 2018, US energy secretary Rick Perry said that reactor manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Company is “ready to get to work” on its projects to build nuclear reactors in India.
Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in 2017 because of cost overruns and was sold by Japan’s Toshiba Corporation to Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management in August 2018.
