For more than a decade, no major meeting between an Indian Prime Minister and a U.S. President has passed without a ritual reference to India’s promise made in 2008 to purchase American nuclear reactors.

Red flags in the U.S. deal:

•  Because of serious concerns about cost and safety, the two organisations should have been told to abandon and not to finalise the proposal.

• It has been clear for years that electricity from American reactors would be more expensive than competing sources of energy.

• Westinghouse has insisted on a prior assurance that India would not hold it responsible for the consequences of a nuclear disaster, which is effectively an admission that it is unable to guarantee the safety of its reactors.

• The main beneficiaries from India’s import of reactors would be Westinghouse and India’s atomic energy establishment that is struggling to retain its relevance given the rapid growth of renewables. 

What renewables can offer:

• Analysts estimate that each of the two AP1000 units being constructed in the U.S. state of Georgia may cost about $13.8 billion. At these rates, the six reactors being offered to India by Westinghouse would cost almost 6 lakh crore.

• If India purchases these reactors, the economic burden will fall upon consumers and taxpayers.

• In 2013, we estimated that even after reducing these prices by 30%, to account for lower construction costs in India, the first year tariff for electricity would be about 25 per unit.

• On the other hand, recent solar energy bids in India are around 3 per unit. Lazard, the Wall Street firm, estimates that wind and solar energy costs have declined by around 70% to 90% in just the last 10 years and may decline further in the future.

How safe?

• Nuclear power can also impose long-term costs.

• Large areas continue to be contaminated with radioactive materials from the 1986 Chernobyl accident and thousands of square kilometres remain closed off for human inhabitation.

• Nearly a decade after the 2011 disaster, the Fukushima prefecture retains radioactive hotspots and the cost of clean-up has been variously estimated to range from $200-billion to over $600-billion.

Way ahead:

• The idea of importing nuclear reactors is a “zombie idea” that, from a rational viewpoint, should have been dead long ago.

• An earlier plan to install AP1000s in Mithi Virdi, Gujarat was cancelled because of strong local opposition.

• In 2018, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani declared that the reactors “will never come up” in Gujarat.

• The Prime Minister should take a cue from his own State and make a similar announcement for the rest of the country.