India, Canada to sign civil nuclear cooperation agreement

TORONTO: Thirty-six years after Canada slapped sanctions on India after it exploded an atomic device, the two countries will sign a civil nuclear agreement paving the way for supply of uranium and cooperation in research, development and radiation safety.

A research partnership to improve the pressurised heavy-water reactors used by both countries is also being planned, official sources said on Sunday.

The civil nuclear cooperation agreement will be inked when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper for a “substantive” bilateral engagement.

The move comes 36 years after Canada slapped sanctions on India after it exploded an atomic device using a Canadian-made nuclear reactor.

“This is an opportunity for the two countries to sell heavy-water technology to third-party countries,” official sources said and added that India would seek to market the technology to third countries like Jordan, Turkey and Thailand.

The sources said that the deal was driven by climate change concerns, India’s voracious appetite for power and energy security issues.

Canada, which is the world’s largest producer of uranium, has become the eighth country with which India has reached a civil nuclear agreement since the Nuclear Supplier’s Group (NSG) lifted a 34-year-old ban on India to join global nuclear trade in September 2008.

Other countries with which India has signed a nuclear deal are the US, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Argentina and Namibia.

Indian officials say that the engagement between Singh and Harper will give a fresh impetus to the economic and commercial cooperation between India and Canada in the areas of Science and Technology, health, agriculture and culture.

The nuclear pact would cover areas of research and development in nuclear energy, nuclear waste management, radiation safety and environment protection, they said.

Canadian companies are already looking to capitalise on this emerging market, the sources said.

Sources said that Cameco, the Saskatoon-based uranium giant with mines in Saskatchewan and Kazakhstan, established a sales office in Hyderabad in September last year.

Meanwhile, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, which makes Canadian heavy-water reactors, is also on the hunt for new customers.

The company is one of the only large players in the global nuclear power market to use heavy-water technology.

With customers in Romania, South Korea and Argentina, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited has been unsuccessful in its efforts to land a buyer for its next-generation reactor, the ACR-100.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2010.