After signing an agreement with NTPC to form a new subsidiary, Nuclear Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is now planning two more subsidiaries and is scouting for joint venture equity partners. This is part of its fund raising programme for setting up captive power plants, which entails an approximate investment of Rs 4 lakh crore, by 2035.
NPCIL chairman & managing director SK Jain, who was in Hyderabad as part of a ceremony to hand over a fuelling machine at MTAR Technologies to Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, said, ?We are looking for equity partners to set up captive power plants and have initiated talks with Indian Oil, Nalco and Indian Railways.?? The investors are reliably learnt to have evinced interest to become equity partners in the proposed nuclear power plants.
Recently, NTPC and NPCIL inked a joint venture to set up power plants in the country. While NPCIL would hold a 51% stake, NTPC would share 49% of the equity. Jain said the country has chalked out a nuclear power programme based on the domestic resource position of uranium and thorium. Considering the large thorium reserves in the country, the future nuclear power will be based on Thorium-233U fuel cycle, he said.
While three reactors at Kaiga (1) and Koodankulam (2), Tamil Nadu are under advanced stages of completion, work on four pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) of 700 mw each, two units each at Kakrapar in Gujarat and at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan had been commenced this year. The total nuclear power capacity in the country will reach 10,080 mw by 2017 including 500 mw Fast Breeder Reactor.
NPCIL recently commissioned two nuclear power reactors of 220 mw each at Rajasthan in February and March, taking the nuclear power capacity in the country to 4,560 mw. The power generation during the year 2009-10 at 18,831 MUs was 26% higher than the generation last year. Besides, it is also setting up seven nuclear power reactors of 5,020 mw.
NPCIL has planned to commence work on four PWHRs of 700 mw two each in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh and also light water reactors with foreign cooperation at the coastal sites in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu by 2012. Indigenous programmes are being charted out by which six to eight reactors will be commissioned by the year 2020, having a total capacity of 15,000 mw. Besides, imported reactors on coastal sites are being identified at Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and an energy park in West Bengal having over 10,000 mw multiple reactors. Two inland sites are coming up in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh with four units of 700 mw.
