India’s Answer to Trump on Climate Is Nuclear Power

Business has been slow at a Larsen & Toubro Ltd. factory in western India that makes parts for nuclear power plants. The Mumbai-based construction company opened the plant in 2012, hoping to profit from government plans to build more reactors in a country where more than 200 million people lack access to electricity. But most of the projects have gone nowhere, and L&T’s facility in Hazira is running at one-fifth of capacity. “That’s not the best use of resources,” says Senior Vice President Y.S. Trivedi.

L&T’s factory could soon be humming. On June 1, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that the two countries would work together to expand India’s largest nuclear power station. In mid-May, Modi’s cabinet approved a plan to add 10 Indian-made reactors with a combined output of 7,000 megawatts, roughly double the country’s current nuclear capacity.