Since late 2008, after the NSG approval, India’s nuclear energy sector has been seeing tremendous growth. With installed capacity of nuclear energy estimated to grow to about 10,000 MW by 2012 from the current 4120 MW, one can understand the magnitude of the opportunity (taking a conservative capex of $4 million per MW, that’d be anywhere between $20-40 billion of investments happennig in the next 3-5 years.
(India plans to enhance its installed capacity to 20 GW by 2020 and 63 GW by 2030, but these are real long range plans, and hence best viewed with a lot of scepticism)
Such enormous investments are likely to benefit a wide range of businesses, Indian and foreign. This mainly includes opportunities for power equipment manufacturers, uranium suppliers and forging companies in and outside India.
Companies from Russia, France and Kazakhstan are among those discussing fuel and equipment supply with the government for upcoming nuclear power plants. Early 2009, the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad had placed an order for 300 tonnes of uranium ore concentrate with France-based Areva. In Feb 2009, the Department of Atomic Energy signed a $700 million contract with Russia’s TVEL for supply of 2,000 tonnes of uranium pellets.
For Indian companies,. major opportunities are opening up for companies such as Larsen & Toubro, Bhel, Bharat Forge, Punj Lloyd and NTPC.
Source credits: DNA India
