Manmohan Singh asserts India's stance on Nuclear energy

New Delhi, Jun 1: When people speak of Dr Manmohan Singh as a person, they call him honest, erudite and an extremely simple man. And in contrast, when they are asked what their impression of him as the Prime Minister of India, is most of them would say that he appears to be lacking the assertiveness and even some would call him remote-controlled. But here is an instance, where despite worldwide pressure, he simply refuses to bow and is willing to carry on with what he thinks is the best for India.

Manmohan Singh's efforts to sign the Indo-US Nuclear agreement, very much like his now legendary step of liberalising Indian economy, has become a part of political folk lore. Continuing with his love for nuclear energy for India, Dr Singh has now clarified that come whatsoever, India will continue to use nuclear energy to tread its path of development.

His views come after Germany has decided to shut down all its nuclear reactors in the wake of the nuclear crisis that has engulfed Japan.

While addressing a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, he said, "One thing which is quite clear is that if India is to meet its emission targets, then nuclear energy along with renewable sources of energy is a combination which we need."

And added, "We will make every effort to ensure that safety norms in generation and utilization of nuclear power are world class, but we must have the option to make use of nuclear energy, together with the heavy reliance on coal which is inevitable for quite sometime, to come in our country."

Further stating his firm desire of ushering in an era of nuclear energy in India he said, "Nuclear energy today accounts for only about 3% of total energy generated in our system. As of now, our capacity is less than 5,000 mw. We want to raise it to about 20,000 mw by the year 2020. Thereafter, there are some projections but no firm decisions have been taken."

OneIndia News