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NEW DELHI: Nuclear Power Corporation (NPCIL) and EDF of France on Saturday signed an agreement for building the 10,000-MW (megawatt) Jaitapur nuclear power plant, making India the fifth country to opt for the EPR (European pressurised reactor) technology that is yet to become commercially operational anywhere in the world.

A statement issued by NPCIL said the agreement, signed to coincide with French president Emannuel Macron 's ongoing visit, defines the project’s industrial framework, the roles and responsibilities of the partners and lays down a timetable for the next step.

The agreement for the Jaitapur project billed as the world's largest nuclear power project with six EPR reactors comes even though questions over the untested EPR technology, project cost and power tariff as well as EDF's ability to complete the project on time remain unanswered.

EDF is a French state-controlled company and is Europe's largest operator of nuclear power plants. The company last year took over the nuclear power equipment-making business of Areva, which had developed the EPR technology and was to originally build the Jaitapur plant, after it landed in dire straits.

All the nuclear power projects using the EPR technology currently under construction globally - Hinkley Point in the UK, Olkiluoto in Finland, Flamanville in France and Taishan in China - are facing time and cost over-runs.

Areva had signed the MoU for Jaitapur in 2009, with an estimated cost of $4 billion. In April 2015, Areva signed a pre-engineering agreement with NPCIL to examine the licensability of its EPR technology in India.

The troubles for Areva began after it found few takers for its EPR technology as the world shunned nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan . The EPR technology is yet to become commercially operational anywhere in the world.

But the more basic question for the Jaitapur project pertains to the cost of energy. Sources said the tariff could go up to Rs 8 or so unless the project gets cheap financing from the French or Indian government lending agencies. Even the Rs 7 per unit price cap will appear costly in public perception in the backdrop of solar and wind power tariff dropping to below Rs 3 per unit-mark. Admittedly, solar and wind are intermittent energy sources as against nuclear power station. But it may be hard to manage public perception.

Besides, the sources said, the "fear of the untried technology" still remains one of the key areas of concern. This could have partially been addressed had EDF taken full responsibility of engineering, procurement and construction process. But the French company has so far not agreed to this and only inked a co-operation deal with Indian engineering-construction giant L&T for higher localisation of the fabrication process.

