Westinghouse plans 6 nuclear-power plants in India

Westinghouse Electric Company, a global supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies, plans to set up six AP1000 nuclear power plants in India by 2016.

"We believe that India is a very important market for us. There is need for electricity in India, and with the opening up of nuclear trade between the United States and India, we can really help India strengthen its nuclear infrastructure with our technology," Meena Mutyala, the newly appointed vice president and business leader for India at Westinghouse, told rediff.com ahead of her trip to India in January.

"We work in various countries and India is very high on our list," she said.

Mutyala said the AP1000 design, certified by the NRC in early 2006, is fast becoming the technology of choice in key markets throughout the world, including China which selected Westinghouse in 2006 to provide two AP1000s each at both the Sanmen and Haiyang sites.

Contracts for those plants were signed in July 2007. In the United States, she said, the AP1000 is the announced technology of choice for no less than 14 new plants, including four for which engineering; procurement and construction contracts have been signed.

Asked how early the power plants could be set up in India, Mutyala said the company would start working on the AP 1000 by 2010 which are economical to construct and maintain. "It will take six years to complete; so by 2016 we will be up and running," she said.

"We are working on getting a site assignment from the Indian government and once the site is assigned we will start our contractual negotiations and have a contract within a year," she said.

The trade mission, sponsored by the US-India Business Council in cooperation with the Nuclear Energy Institute, was to begin Dec. 2 in New Delhi and conclude Dec. 9 in Mumbai, but was postponed to January following the Mumbai terror attacks.

That Westinghouse is attaching a lot of importance to the Indian market was evident when the company appointed Mutyala in November to the newly created position of vice president and business leader, India strategy. In her new position, Mutyala is responsible for formulating a business strategy to pursue commercial nuclear power opportunities in India.

Mutyala who holds a degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, a master's in nuclear engineering from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, has led the acquisition by Westinghouse of the global nuclear businesses of ABB.