India after six years of struggle and many negotiations, finally signed the land marked civil nuclear agreement with Japan in Tokyo. PM Narendra Modi is on three day visit to Tokyo, where he is signed this agreement with his counterpart Shinzo Abe. This deal is aimed to help India access Japan’s nuclear market.
Highlights:
- India is the first non-member of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to have signed such a deal with Japan.
- The agreement will allow Japan to supply nuclear reactors, fuel and technology to India.
- The agreement has been signed after soughting assurances from New Delhi that it would not conduct nuclear tests any more.
- India has declared a moratorium on nuclear testing since its last explosions in 1998. But with concerns about neighbours China and Pakistan being nuclear armed, it has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, contending that it is discriminatory.
- Japan can give a year’s notice before terminating it in case India breaks the nuclear testing moratorium
- With this deal, it will become easier for US-based companies like Westinghouse and GE to set up atomic plants in India as both have Japanese investments.
- India is in advanced negotiations with Westinghouse Electric, owned by Japan’s Toshiba, to build six nuclear reactors in the south – a part of New Delhi’s plan to ramp up nuclear capacity ten-fold by 2032.
- Along with this deal, there was a clear message from Prime Ministers of both countries of condemning terrorism in strongest terms in all its forms and manifestations in the spirit of ‘zero tolerance’.
- PM Modi travelled to Kobe by the famed Shinkansen bullet train, the technology that will be deployed for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Railway. He visited the Kawasaki Heavy Industries facility in Kobe, where high speed railway is manufactured.
Along with this civil nuclear agreement with Japan, there are also signed nine agreements including one on cooperation between ISRO and JAXA in outer space. Another MoU that was signed covered investment in infrastructure projects in railways and transport terminals.
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