Clearly undeterred by the widespread public prote-sts in India against the Koodankulam and Jaita-pur projects, South Korea on Sunday expressed interest in building nucl-ear reactors for India.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak asked Prime Minister Manmo-han Singh at their bilateral meeting here on Sunday morning to “allocate a site for Korean nuclear reactors”. This was spelt out in the joint statement which was issued after their meeting.
The request was not unexpected given that the two nations signed a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement during President Pratibha Patil’s visit here last July. The request comes a day before the Nuclear Security Summit begins here on Monday.
South Korean companies have been expressing keen interest in entering the Indian nuclear energy sector, and New Delhi too is not averse to the idea. Confirming this, India’s ambassador in Seoul Vishnu Prakash noted that some of them had “developed price competitive technologies”. The South Korean companies interested in entering the Indian nuclear energy field include Kepco (Korea Electric Power Corpora-tion) and Dusan. South Korea itself has 21 civil nuclear plants which meet 40 per cent of the country’s power needs, he pointed out.