BL reported that after its recent agreement to form a joint venture with NTPC to set up nuclear power plants, Nuclear Power Corporation of India is now in the process of concluding similar agreements with the country's biggest oil retailer Indian Oil Corporation and aluminium major National Aluminium Company in the next few months.

This is part of NPCIL's efforts at bringing in a clutch of equity partners to raise financial resources to fuel the country's nuclear power programme that aims at achieving a generation capacity of 35,000 MW by 2020 and 45,000 MW by 2032.

Mr SK Jain CMD of NPCIL said that within the next two weeks the boards of NPCIL and NTPC would meet to finalise the modalities for setting up a new joint venture company, which will be a subsidiary of both the partners. The new entity will then identify nuclear power projects and explore ways to finance them.

Mr Jain said that the agreements with IOC and Nalco would be slightly different in that the oil and aluminium companies would be primarily equity partners for certain specific projects. He added that “Other organisations like the Indian Railways have also approached us to participate in India's nuclear power programme for their captive power requirement we are evaluating the proposals.”

Dr Srikumar Banerjee, chairman of AEC and Secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy said India currently produced 4,560 MW of nuclear power with 19 reactors at six sites. Four reactors were under construction that would enhance generation capacity 7,280 MW by 2012.

(Sourced from Business Line)