US’s big announcement on civil nuclear partnership with India: Sullivan says paperwork will be done soon

New Delhi: US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced on Monday during his visit to New Delhi that the United States is finalising measures to eliminate roadblocks for civil nuclear partnerships with Indian companies. “…Although former President Bush and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh laid out a vision of civil nuclear cooperation nearly 20 years ago, we have yet to fully realize it. But as we work to build clean energy technologies to enable growth in artificial intelligence, and to help US and Indian energy companies unlock their innovation potential, the Biden administration has determined that it is past time to take the next major step in cementing this partnership,” Sullivan said while speaking at IIT-Delhi on Monday.

It is worth mentioning India and America has been in talks about supplying US nuclear reactors to New Delhi since the mid-2000s. However, a key challenge has been aligning India’s liability rules with global standards, which stipulate that the costs of any nuclear accident should be borne by the operator, not the plant’s manufacturer.

The agreement was signed by then-US President George W. Bush in 2007. This marked a substantial shift toward enabling the United States to sell civilian nuclear technology to India.

“So today I can announce that the United States is now finalising the necessary steps to remove long-standing regulations that have prevented civil nuclear cooperation between India’s leading nuclear entities and US Companies. The formal paperwork will be done soon but this will be an opportunity to turn the page on some of the frictions of the past and create opportunities for entities that have been on restricted lists in the United States to come off those lists and enter into deep collaboration with the United States, with our private sector, scientists and technologists to move civil nuclear cooperation forward together…,” he noted.