On the power shortages, the facts are as follows. India's growing shortage of electricity has little to do with a lack of nuclear energy but a lot to do with starving the power sector of public investments over the last two decades. In the last three Five-year plans, capacity additions has been of around 20,000 MW per Plan, less than what we had added in the 7th Plan Even if the Deal is signed today, it will take about 8 years before any electricity is produced from imported reactors under the Deal. The cost of installing nuclear power plants using imported reactors is three times that of coal-fired plants of the same size. The cost of electricity from such plants will be more than Rs. 5.00,twice that from coal-fired plants The quickest and cheapest way to remove the current electricity shortages is to build coal-fired plants which take half the time required by nuclear plants Nuclear plants require imported uranium, which is controlled by a small international cartel. The price of uranium has gone up by five times in the last few years because of this cartel. Nuclear energy has an important place in India 's energy option and this route needs to be kept open for the future. However, this should be based on our indigenous technology and our indigenous resources to ensure energy security. Even with the most optimistic nuclear scenario that the Government has projected, Nuclear energy will at best meet only 8% of our electricity demand and about 4% of our total primary
