US companies non-committal on lifetime fuel supply to nuclear plants

American nuclear companies were today non-committal on lifetime fuel supply to Indian atomic plants they plan to set up here but said they would not stand in the way of New Delhi making its own arrangements in the event of a change in US policy.

"The US-India 123 agreement does say that if there are changes in the US policy on supplying nuclear fuel to India, the US administration will not stand in the way of Indian nuclear plants from getting fuel from other places," Meena Mutyala, vice president of Westinghouse Electric Company said here.

She was speaking at a press conference after the seventh meeting of the USIBC-CII Joint Task Force on Commercial Nuclear Cooperation here.

Mutyala said she expects actual construction of the nuclear plants built with US technology sometime in 2011 and would take another six years for starting power generation.

On implementation of the US-India civil nuclear deal, Timothy Richards, managing director, General Electric said the US companies were yet to get authorisation from the US administration to export American nuclear technology to India.

Besides, he said the US companies are yet to be allocated the two sites identified by India for setting up nuclear reactors using American technology.

Also, Richards said India and the US still has not concluded the nuclear fuel reprocessing agreement and India was yet to enact the nuclear liability law.