Days after the trust vote in the Parliament which has paved the way for the Manmohan Singh government to push ahead the Indo-US Nuclear deal, Sajjan Jindal-owned JSW Group on Thursday announced its intention to foray into the nuclear power sector. “Nuclear power would be a very good thing. We want to foray into the area. We are talking to global majors,” Jindal said. The Group, through its power generation subsidiary JSW Energy, would either enter into a joint venture or may ink a technological tie-up with a global major for this purpose. Jindal declined to name its foreign partners saying, “These are confidential issues.”
In early stages of negotiation, JSW has not yet firmed up plans of its proposed power generation portfolio from nuclear energy sources. “Each turbine normally generates 1,000 MW and we are yet to decide how many turbine we will put up. It is still early days and we don’t know how many turbines we will build,” Jindal said. Jindal, the newly elected president of the industry body Assocham, would lead a delegation to the PM Manmohan Singh next week urging him to formulate strategy to allow private sector enter into the sector. Industry sources said that at least 30 companies are eager to enter into nuclear power sector and related areas aiming to generate a minimum of 20,000 MW in the next 10 years involving investments of US$40 billion.
This includes almost all the big names of the power industry, including Reliance Power and a few new entrants that includes a major real estate player as well, they said.
