information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
28 Août 2014
August 28, 2014
Reuters
NEW DELHI – India is hoping to win Japanese backing for a nuclear energy pact during a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and to lure investment into its $85 billion market while addressing Japan’s concerns about doing business with a nuclear armed country.
India has been pushing for an agreement with Japan along the same lines as a 2008 deal with the United States, under which India was allowed to import U.S. nuclear fuel and technology without giving up its military nuclear program.
But Japan wants explicit Indian guarantees not to conduct nuclear tests, and more intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities, to ensure that spent fuel is not diverted to make bombs.
India, which sees its weapons as a deterrent against nuclear-armed neighbors China and Pakistan, has sought to meet Japan’s concerns. Over the past month, the two sides have sped up negotiations ahead of Modi’s visit.
“Serious efforts are being made to resolve any special concerns that Japan has. Whether it will be fully resolved and ready for signing before the end of the PM’s trip is unclear,” said a former member of India’s top atomic energy commission who has been consulted in the drafting of the energy pact.
“I would give it a little better-than-even chance at this point,” he said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
Modi will travel to Japan on Saturday for a five-day visit, his first major bilateral trip since taking office in May. The visit is being billed as an attempt by the two democracies to balance the rising weight of China across Asia.
Modi and host Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are also expected to boost defense ties, speeding up talks on the sale of an amphibious aircraft to the Indian Navy.
Another focus is infrastructure, with the Indian leader seeking Japanese backing for the high-speed bullet trains he promised to voters in his election campaign.
But it is the nuclear pact that can transform ties in a way the deal with the United States did by establishing India as a strategic partner, although nuclear commerce with the United States has since foundered because of concerns over India’s liability laws.
Officials in Japan were tight-lipped about the prospects for a nuclear deal.
A civil nuclear energy pact with India would give Japanese nuclear technology firms such as Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. access to India’s fast-growing market as they seek opportunities overseas to offset an anti-nuclear backlash at home in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
India operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 megawatts, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited. The government hopes to increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 megawatts by 2032 by adding nearly 30 reactors.
India is considering a Japanese proposal for a separate commitment not to test nuclear weapons over and above a self-imposed moratorium it declared after testing in 1998.
Another possibility is that Modi would give a personal assurance to Abe on India’s nuclear weapons program to help allay concerns in Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, which has since been a champion of nonproliferation and disarmament.
“India and Japan are laying the foundations of a bigger deal,” said Lt. Gen. A.S. Lamba, former vice chief of the army and an expert on ties with Japan.
“It’s no use rushing into something that fails to get off the ground, which is what happened to the India-U.S. agreement,” Lamba said. “This is being constructed slowly, this is a defining moment.”
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