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India renews talks on building nuclear power plants.

The Indian government has put renewed vigour into nuclear power plans as part of its infrastructure development programme, with negotiations on to unlock long-standing agreements with French, Russian and US companies, said a report released here today."Its overall goal is to have 14.5 GWe (Gigawatt or one billion watts of electricity power) of nuclear generating capacity online by 2024, compared to 6,219 MWe now," said the World Nuclear Performance Report 2016 released at the Singapore International Energy Week being held this week. The government gave in principle approval for new nuclear plants at 10 sites in nine states, according to the report by the World Nuclear Association.Those for indigenous pressurised heavy water reactor are at Gorakhpur in Haryana's Fatehabad; Chutka and Bhimpur in Madhya Pradesh; Kaiga in Karnataka; and Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan.

Those for plants with foreign cooperation are Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu; in Jaitapur in Maharashtra; Chhaya Mithi Virdhi in Gujarat; Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh and Haripur in West Bengal, though this location has been in doubt.In addition, two 600 MWe fast breeder reactors are proposed at Kalpakkam.

The association noted challenges of providing electricity across the world's rural regions where people lack electricity. It has set a higher target for nuclear power - 25 per cent of electricity in 2050, which would require an estimated 1,000 GWe capacity.