Aus PM Abbott offers uranium, coal to energy-starved India

Reuters New Delhi, September 05, 2014

First Published: 11:22 IST(5/9/2014) | Last Updated: 16:55
IST(5/9/2014)
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Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he would seal a
civil nuclear deal to sell uranium to India on Friday, offering to
ramp up supplies of energy to help the emerging Asian giant
overcome chronic shortages.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted Abbott with full state
honours during his two-day visit to India. The two leaders were

due to hold formal talks later and sign the deal to sell uranium
for peaceful power generation.
"Prime Minister Modi and I will today sign a nuclear
cooperation agreement," Abbott told business leaders.
In an editorial published in The Hindu he said the two sides had
concluded the nuclear talks, which began about two years ago
after Australia lifted a long-standing ban on selling uranium to
energy-starved India.
"My hope is we can become (a) reliable source of energy
resources and food security for India," Abbott said.
Prior to the meeting hosted by business lobbyists ASSOCHAM,
the group said India should make use of Abbott's visit to seek
more coal imports at a time when Indian thermal power stations
are running critically short of the fuel.
With two-thirds of India's power stations fired by coal, and latest
data showing that half of them down to a week's stock, tapping
into Australia's coal reserves is a more pressing need than
accessing uranium.
Nuclear power accounts for just 3% of output, down from 3.7%
three years ago.
"While Coal India can be asked to step up its production, the
growing needs make it imperative to go in for more imports ...
and what better source than Australia whose top leadership is
engaged with strategic relationship with India," ASSOCHAM
president Rana Kapoor said in a statement.

The Australian government in July approved a A$16.5 billion

coal and rail project in the province of Queensland by Indian
firm Adani Mining Pty Ltd, controlled by billionaire Gautam
Adani.
However, nuclear power is key to future energy plans in India,
where a quarter of the 1.2 billion population has little or no
access to electricity, a situation Modi has vowed to tackle.
Earlier this week, Modi was in Japan where he sought to
accelerate negotiations of a civil nuclear agreement modeled on
a deal with the United States in 2008 that ended years of
isolation after India tested a nuclear weapon in 1998.
India operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a
capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2% of its total power capacity,
according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.
The government hopes to increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000
MW by 2032 by adding nearly 30 reactors at an estimated cost
of $85 billion.
In an apparent bid to remove an irritant between the two nations,
Abbott was due to hand over to Modi a $5 million statue of the
Hindu god Shiva that had been illegally trafficked and a stone
statue that had been displayed in an Australian gallery.
Abbott says ties between the two former British colonies are not
as close as they should be.