State-owned Engineers
India Ltd. (EIL), which provides engineering and related technical services
for industrial projects, plans to enter the nuclear business by constructing
underground caverns to store nuclear waste and is likely to use the
services of Swedish consultants SWECO and SKB International Consulting
AB.
SWECO is a consultant to EIL for constructing an underground crude oil
storage facility in Visakhapatnam awarded by Indian Strategic Petroleum
Reserves Ltd., which is overseeing the construction of proposed strategic
oil storage depots.
"Even after main usage, radiation continues for the first 25 years
and requires an intermediate storage and a final repository later,"
said a senior EIL executive. "We have been in touch with the Department
of Atomic Energy and plan to ask them for the preparation of preliminary
feasibility report. For this exercise, we will need the help of SWECO
as they are constructing such facilities in Sweden."
"We may form a non-commercial tripartite agreement with SWECO and
SKB once we get a go-ahead from Department of Atomic Energy," the
EIL executive added.
Nuclear energy accounts for only 4,120MW out of India's installed power
generation capacity of at least 147,000MW. This is expected to change
with India and US having signed a historic nuclear deal last year. According
to audit and consulting firm KPMG's India Energy Outlook report, India's
Department of Atomic Energy hopes to build 250,000MW of nuclear capacity
by 2050.
"We are now looking at other opportunities with EIL. We plan to
construct underground rock caverns with EIL for storing nuclear waste
and tools. We see it as a logical extension," said Gösta Ericson,
country manager, India, for SWECO.