L&T targets Rs3,000-crore annually from nuclear power: A M Naik

03 October 2008

The nuclear deal stands to benefit Indian power companies, says A M Naik, chairman, Larsen & Toubro. “The opportunity to the Indian industry is the order of magnitude of about Rs2.5 lakh-crore to Rs3 lakh-crore" and  L&T is targeting roughly 25 pr cent to  30 per cent of it per year, he says. CNBC-TV18 shares domain-b its exclusive interview with Naik.

What is the opportunity for nuclear power in this country for L&T and the timeline since starting today? How long will it take for the first power plant to come up?
There will be immediate relief for current projects, which are running at less than 50-per cent capacity for not having got nuclear fuel. There will be about 2,500-3,000 megawatts (MW) extra power generation once the fuel is supplied. So we benefit for some plants right away and in the next six months to a year for the others.

Talking about the major nuclear programme that is being rumoured around as 40,000 MW, 10,000 MW is supposed to come from the heavy water-based nuclear power plants and 30,000 MW is supposed to come from other technologies.

The real issue is three-fold, other than improving the utilisation of the existing power plant. One is that proper technology agreements have to be signed and that takes a long time because each one will try to protect its position.

Then you need to locate at least three sides. There has been a lot of visits of all the three nuclear technology suppliers. These are, in this case, Westinghouse, General
Electric, which is a boiling-water reactor and Areva (France). We need clarification on the role of Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC).

Will they be involved in the overall programme management or will they act only as an owner in future? Though there will be a lot of activities in restructuring Nuclear Power Corporation.

The cost of setting up nuclear power plants are aid to be twice that of a conventional coal plant as the fixed costs are high, and therefore for the first few years this power going to be much more expensive? Who is going to be interested in buying this power?
My information is a little different from what you have said because when heavy-water was produced by us from our own heavy-water plant, the NPC (Nuclear Power Corporation) had very competitive rates for supplying electricity.