Russia to build more N-reactors in India

) Russia today said it may build more atomic power reactors in India, although there were international curbs on the scale of nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

"Russia may build more nuclear power rectors in India," Kremlin's foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters here briefing on yesterday's meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

He noted India's growing energy requirements for its sustained economic development and New Delhi's interest in Russian involvement in the development of nuclear power projects as part of Indian energy security efforts.

Russia is currently building 2000MWe Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, which is scheduled to be commissioned in 2007. The final agreement on Kudankulam was signed in June 1998.

Russia is supplying two 1000VVER-type light water reactors under the Kudankulam deal inked in 1985 by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. After the Soviet collapse the deal was revived despite strong US opposition when Moscow insisted that its joining of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in early 1990s has no retrospective implications.

Prikhodko conceded that "there are certain issues involving Russia's commitments to NSG" and the scale of cooperation depends on the NSG guidelines.

"There are opportunities for further progress, though," he said.

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