India has proposed to provide equipment and materials for the Rooppur nuclear power plant project in Bangladesh.
Top Indian officials announced this at the recently concluded 61st general conference of the global nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at Vienna, reports
The Economic Times (ET).
Indian firms were working with Russian and Bangladeshi partners to make sure that they play "a substantive role" in the project, noted officials.
Bangladeshi nuclear scientists from the Rooppur nuclear power plant project are already getting trained at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu – which was also built using Russian nuclear technology.
Rooppur nuclear power plant is India's first atomic energy venture on foreign soil, reports the ET.
The 2014 "Strategic Vision for Strengthening Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" between India and Russia says the "two sides will explore opportunities for sourcing materials, equipment and services from Indian industry for the construction of the Russian- designed nuclear power plants in third countries."
During Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's four-day visit in New Delhi in April, India has signed a civil nuclear cooperation deal along with two related deals with Bangladesh.
The Rooppur nuclear power plant – which is 160km away from Dhaka – involves two units, each with a capacity of 1200 megawatts.
It will consist of the Russian design AES-2006 with VVER-1200 reactors. "The prototype of such reactors were used at the Novovoronezh NPP02 in Russia. This is an evolutionary design of III+ generation, claimed by Rosatom, Russia’s state-run apex atomic energy body, to be fully compliant with the international safety requirements," reports the ET.
The technology could also be extended to the second Russian built set of six reactors in India, the ET reports.
The generation III+ reactor at the sixth unit of Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant (NVNPP) is the world’s first to be built using "post-Fukushima" safety standards and has an automated system in case of an emergency, Rosatom officials told the ET.