Japan yet to make full use of nuclear power equipment export treaty with India

New Delhi – No concrete progress has been made in exporting nuclear power plant equipment from Japan to India since the two countries signed a treaty of cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy a decade ago.

This is despite India having established a legal framework that made it easier for foreign firms to supply nuclear plants to the country as the government seeks to expand the installed capacity, or the maximum potential output of electricity, of nuclear plants.

The treaty, which allows Japan to export nuclear power technology and equipment, was signed in November 2016 and took effect in July 2017. One of the factors hindering Japan’s nuclear power plant exports had been India’s nuclear liability law.

The law stipulated that not only plant operators but also equipment suppliers would be held liable for damage from nuclear accidents. The provision discouraged companies from entering the business.

In December last year, India established a law that allows equipment vendors to avoid liability unless they explicitly assume it through contractual agreements. The law also partially allows companies, including foreign firms, to build and operate nuclear power plants.

“Export opportunities may expand, including through collaboration with foreign manufacturers,” said an official at Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, an industry group. The group said that Japanese firms have a track record of supplying equipment to U.S.-made nuclear power plants.

Currently, 24 nuclear reactors are in operation in India, with a total installed capacity of approximately 8.78 gigawatts. The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a goal of boosting that capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2047, when India marks its 100th year of independence.

The Modi administration also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2070.

“Nuclear power, with negligible operational greenhouse gas emissions, is indispensable to that pathway,” said Daya Shankar, associate professor at Woxsen University in the Indian city of Hyderabad.

The nuclear cooperation treaty caused a controversy in Japan at the time of its signing because this meant that Japan, the only country hit by atomic weapons, would be allowed to export nuclear plants to India, a nuclear state that is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“Antinuclear sentiment remains strong within Japan’s domestic politics” following the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima Prefecture, Shankar said. Any “move to export nuclear technology to a non-NPT signatory invited sharp domestic criticism,” he added.

Environmentalist E.A.S. Sarma, a former Indian government official who opposed the Japan-India treaty, said, “Please ponder over the disruption that a nuclear power plant will cause in the lives of the local communities and how it exposes vast stretches of thickly populated areas to the scourge of a Fukushima-like disaster, as and when it happens.”