India may begin construction on 6 large scale EPR nuclear reactors in 2008.

[NNadir]

Indian power companies are drawing provisional plans for a huge expansion in nuclear capacity after the expected lifting of trade restrictions.

Reports in the Indian newspaper Financial Express indicate that Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is discussing the construction of a 10,000 MWe nuclear plant composed of six of Areva's EPR pressurized water reactor units in the state of Maharashtra. Most other NPCIL units are indigenously developed pressurised heavy water reactors.

Officials would hope to begin work on the first of the EPRs as early as 2008. Chairman of the company, S K Jain said such a project would cost just $11.4 billion in India.

Separately, India's largest electric utility, NTPC, has made moves towards exploiting nuclear power for the first time. On 5 March the company's board of directors approved a proposal to amend its association documents to allow the use of nuclear power. NTPC decribed this as a strategic initiative.

Consultants including former staff of NPCIL and the Atomic Energy Commission were hired to define a roadmap for NTPC, resulting in the goal of 6000 MWe of nuclear capacity. According to NTPC chair and managing director, T Sankaralingam: "We will have 2000 MWe of nuclear power generation by the middle of the 12th plan (2012-2017). Simultaneously, we will work on two power plants of 2000 MWe each."

NTPC are reportedly in discussion with General Electric and Thorium Power. The company is considering sites in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Maharastra.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newNuclear/Indian_generators_think_ahead.shtml

[phantom power]

1. $1.14 per watt installed

[GliderGuider]

2. Isn't that about the same cost as wind turbines?

[phantom power]

3. Cheaper. Even more so, since wind isn't base-load.

[NNadir]

4. If you have been to India, and I have, you know why this is.

It is cheaper to hire 500 people to mix cement in buckets than it is to buy a cement truck.

It's very sad on some level.

On the bright side these plants are infrastructure, and they will improve - at very low environmental cost - access to wealth there.

[phantom power]

5. We may live to see labor that cheap here too.

Once our transition to 3rd-world country is complete. Then we can all try to emigrate to India. Maybe they will erect their version of the statue of liberty there for us.

[NNadir]

6. I recall hearing that in the 1930's, unemployed people used to stand

outside the construction gates at the Hoover dam (then called the Boulder dam) and cheer when a worker fell off the dam and was killed.

It meant a new job opening.

It not only can happen here, it has happened here.