India to promote large capacity N-power parks: Banerjee

India will push for building large capacity integrated nuclear energy parks to step up nuclear power production to meet increasing power demands, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman S Banerjee said today.

The integrated energy parks will have some imported reactors of very high capacity ranging from 6,000 Mw to 15,000 Mw and this is essential in the wake of energy demand in India going up to 600,000 Mw by 2032, Banerjee, also the Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

The energy parks will have several high-capacity reactors. "The advantage of energy parks is that sharing of infrastructure, energy evacuation can help bring down the cost of production which is reflected in the tariff," he said.

Similar parks are also coming up at Haripur in Midnapore district of West Bengal involving Russian reactors and French reactors are being installed in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, he said.

"We are yet to decide on the two projects proposed by companies in the US and are still in the discussion stage," Banerjee said.

The other main focus, he said, has been developing indigenous technology in nuclear reactor systems. Several reactors are already coming up with indigenous technology in the family of 700 Mw reactors.