India an attractive partner for UK nuclear business community
The UK nuclear business community is very optimistic about nuclear commerce with India in the form of joint ventures.
Describing the collaboration between India and UK as a win-win situation, Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, the business ambassador who leads the UK business delegation here, said, "With the joint ventures like 10-year transfer of technology deal between UK-based Sheffield Forgemasters and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) to build huge forgings; and signing of MoUs like one between Rolls Royce and L&T for instrumentation and control systems or that between Nuvia and Punj Lloyd, are very significant."
"We look forward to more such deals," she said.
India and UK signed civil nuclear cooperation last year.
"India's role in global nuclear renaissance is very significant. If all nuclear plants come up simultaneously in different parts of the world, there will be a long queue for the huge forgings (reactor pressure vessel) as there are only two companies globally supplying.
So if India and UK join hands, we can not only supply forging to our own nuclear power programmes but to the entire world ," Judge, who was the former director of UK Atomic Energy Authority, said.
On enhancing the human resource development, Judge said, "We are exploring collaboration in both research and training programmes with various institutions in India."
In the research field, already there are six joint research projects and both UK and India have committed 1.2 million Sterling each for them. UK Research councils, Imperial College and University of Manchester will be involved in these projects, she said.
"We are also trying to bring back engineers and attract young students to work for building nuclear industry...who otherwise go to financial institutions," she said.
Talking about safety and regulatory process, Judge said Indian Atomic Regulatory Board was doing a great job in this regard.
"Safety and Regulations are two important aspects of a smooth running nuclear industry and it is important that those countries which are interested in having nuclear power programme should evolve regulatory process appropriate for their own programmes," she said.
