India an attractive partner for UK nuclear business community

Mumbai, Feb 22 (PTI) The UK nuclear business community isvery optimistic about nuclear commerce with India in the formof joint ventures.

Describing the collaboration between India and UK as awin-win situation, Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, the businessambassador who leads the UK business delegation here, said,"With the joint ventures like 10-year transfer of technologydeal between UK-based Sheffield Forgemasters and Bharat HeavyElectricals Ltd (BHEL) to build huge forgings; and signing ofMoUs like one between Rolls Royce and L&T for instrumentationand control systems or that between Nuvia and Punj Lloyd, arevery 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 verysignificant. If all nuclear plants come up simultaneouslyin different parts of the world, there will be a long queuefor the huge forgings (reactor pressure vessel) as there areonly two companies globally supplying. So if India and UKjoin hands, we can not only supply forging to our own nuclearpower programmes but to the entire world ," Judge, who wasthe former director of UK Atomic Energy Authority, said.

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On enhancing the human resource development, Judge said, "We are exploring collaboration in both research and trainingprogrammes with various institutions in India."

In the research field, already there are six jointresearch projects and both UK and India have committed 1.2million Sterling each for them. UK Research councils, ImperialCollege and University of Manchester will be involved in theseprojects, she said.

"We are also trying to bring back engineers and attractyoung students to work for building nuclear industry...whootherwise go to financial institutions," she said.

Talking about safety and regulatory process, Judge saidIndian Atomic Regulatory Board was doing a great job in thisregard.

"Safety and Regulations are two important aspects of asmooth running nuclear industry and it is important that thosecountries which are interested in having nuclear powerprogramme should evolve regulatory process appropriate fortheir own programmes," she said.