India PM Modi ends foreign tour with nuclear deals in pipeline

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded a whistle-stop diplomatic tour Friday having secured significant pledges of support from Washington and Paris to help step up his country’s nuclear energy programme.

New Delhi has vowed to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070 partly by increasing the number of nuclear plants in the country from eight, which currently account for around three percent of power generation in India.

Modi’s White House meeting with President Donald Trump resulted in an agreement to build US-designed nuclear reactors in India.

“This path forward will unlock plans to build large US-designed reactors and enable collaboration to develop, deploy and scale up nuclear power generation with advanced small modular reactors,” a joint statement said Thursday.

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India revealed a similar deal with France following Modi’s meeting with President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week.

Foreign secretary Vikram Misri said Wednesday that India and France aimed to initiate cooperation on developing small modular nuclear reactors, nothing that the technology was still in its “initial stages”.

“Our intent is to be able to cooperate in co-designing the reactors, co-developing them, and co-producing them,” he told reporters.

Both partnerships come days after Modi’s government announced plans to amend its strict nuclear liability law, which holds operators liable for any damage or accident, with exceptions made for certain situations including natural disasters.

Despite the nuclear tilt, fossil fuels remain very much on the agenda with New Delhi saying it was working towards establishing the United States as its “leading supplier of crude oil and petroleum products and liquified natural gas”.

The plan is “in line with the growing needs and priorities of our dynamic economies”, India said.

Misri said India purchased “about $15 billion in U.S. energy output” and that there was a “good chance” that the figure could go up to as much as $25 billion in the near future.

Earlier this year, India also greenlit a $1.9 billion plan to help snap up supplies of a range of critical minerals vital for the country’s green energy and defence sectors.