Seoul, January 12, South Korea and India are set to sign a nuclear power cooperation pact in the first half of this year, allowing Korean firms to tap India’s multi-billion dollar atomic power plant market, the government said on Wednesday.
“The nuclear cooperation pact will help South Korean firms participate in atomic power plant construction projects in India,” Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed South Korean trade ministry official as saying.
India and South Korea had agreed to commence negotiations on forging a nuclear energy cooperation pact in June last year during the visit here by External Affairs Minister S M Krishna.
Krishna, who co-chaired the 6th meeting of India-ROK Joint Commission along with his Korean counterpart Yu Myung- Hwan, had agreed to launch negotiations for the conclusion of an Inter-Governmental Agreement on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.
“Noting that the two sides had already exchanged drafts of an Inter-Governmental Agreement on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, the two ministers agreed to launch negotiations between the two countries, at an early date, for the conclusion of such an agreement,” an official statement had said in June last year.
In 2009, a South Korean-led consortium won a USD 18.6 billion project to build four atomic power plants in the United Arab Emirates, one of the biggest contracts that the country has ever won from overseas.
South Korea has 20 power-generating nuclear reactors and produces about 40 per cent of its electricity from atomic power. The country plans to build 12 more reactors by 2022.
India now has 17 power-generating reactors and reportedly plans to build 50 more by 2030, the Yonhap report said.
