Canada exporting uranium to India [Archive]

blake 3:17

15th November 2009, 05:57

Cameco hopes to supply uranium to India

Last Updated: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 | 8:49 PM CT

Saskatoon-based uranium miner Cameco Corp. says a multimillion-dollar deal is in the works to supply its product to India for nuclear power plants.

Cameco calls itself the world's largest supplier of uranium.
CEO Jerry Grandey told CBC News on Tuesday that negotiations for an export deal have been underway between authorities in Canada and India for more than a year.
The company expects a deal soon, one that could see a number of different suppliers supplying India with at least seven million pounds of uranium.

"One of the interesting things is that India, of course, has got a very ambitious civilian nuclear power program and they have shortage of uranium within the country," Grandey told CBC News in an interview. "So they've been quite eager to establish a long-term relationship with a supplier like Cameco so that we can — over many decades — supply them the fuel that they need."

On Monday, the company released financial figures for its third quarter and Grandey said the company "remains on target for another strong year in revenue and cash flow."

He said the world is "energy-hungry" and electricity generated by nuclear reactors has a positive outlook.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2009/11/03/sk-cameco-uranium-indian.html

blake 3:17

15th November 2009, 06:00

Nuclear deal key to warming up Canada-India relationship

By David Akin, Canwest News Service November 13, 2009

SINGAPORE — When Prime Minister Stephen Harper lands in Mumbai, India, on Sunday night, he and his officials hope it will mark the warming of a relationship that has been decidedly frosty for more than 30 years, ever since India angered Ottawa by developing a nuclear bomb with unknowing Canadian help.

On May 18, 1974, India exploded its first nuclear bomb in a project code-named Smiling Buddha. Back in Canada, Smiling Buddha caused public outrage because the plutonium used in the bomb was produced by a reactor built on a donated design and technical help provided by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. based on one of its research reactors at its Chalk River, Ont., laboratory.

The government of then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau cut off any exchange of nuclear materials and technology with India in the wake of the test. The rest of the world's nuclear powers quickly formed an organization called the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) set up to monitor and regulate trade in nuclear materials. India was shut out of the NSG and resentment towards Canada among India's scientists and government officials grew.

But last year, the NSG — with Canada voting in favour — lifted that moratorium and that, perhaps more than anything else, made it possible for Harper to begin a three-day tour of India which will include stops in Mumbai, New Delhi and Amritsar.

"I think that was quite a momentous development in the relationship because that is where there is the greatest impediment or the greatest amount of resistance for advancing the relationship," said Manoj Pundit, a Bay Street mergers and acquisitions lawyer who is also the spokesperson for the Canada-India Foundation.

Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a Toronto-based energy and climate campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, says Canada's about-face on selling nuclear technology is more a result of its interest in finding customers for its ailing Crown corporation, AECL.

"Harper is following the lead of (former U.S. president) George Bush in re-opening nuclear relations with India. The reason? Business, pure and simple," Stensil said. "Despite the PR, there isn't much of a market for reactors, and vendors — and their loyal state sponsors — are desperate to sell to anyone, even if it means undermining international agreements to stop nuclear arms proliferation."

Harper's advisers say the trip is designed to ring in "a new era of partnership" between the two countries and, in a background briefing with reporters earlier this week, argued that the trip was about much more than AECL, that its purpose was to develop a comprehensive and holistic relationship with India which, with 1.2 billion people, is the world's largest democracy. The advisers pointed to an itinerary filled with cultural, spiritual and education events — in addition to speeches and meetings with investors and politicians — as evidence that Canada is keen to see its relationship with India flower in all aspects.

And perhaps with an eye towards the votes of the one million Canadians who have origins in India, Harper's advisers have crafted an itinerary that carefully balances events of interests to the Sikh, Hindu and Muslim Indian diaspora. Advisers have even organized a tour of a television reality show that is wildly popular in India, and among the Indian diaspora. That show — Premier Dancing League — is a kind of south Asian version of So You Think You Can Dance, in which contestants try to impress judges with their ability to dance.

But despite all that, the nuclear agenda will be one of the most closely watched files on this trip, for if India and Canada fail to ink a new agreement on nuclear technology, investment activities in other areas could slow.

"It's good for symbolizing the coming together or restoring of relationships between two countries," said Pundit. "I think there are tremendous opportunities for Canada and we should pursue them aggressively. No doubt there are issues and concerns . . . in terms of non-proliferation and safeguards that I'm sure are being ably tackled. There's also a very viable and potentially robust trade opportunity."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Nuclear+deal+warming+Canada+India+relationship/2220050/story.html