India hopes to aggressively build nuclear reactors to generate a total of 20,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020, up from 2,770 megawatts now, a senior official said in an interview published Sunday.
Ten reactors are under construction and when completed would provide India a total capacity of 7,730 megawatts, Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, told The Hindu newspaper.
Among the 10 reactors being built are two using Russian equipment at Koodankulam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Currently, India operates 14 nuclear power reactors, each with the capacity of 220 megawatts or 540 megawatts.
Kakodkar said reactors India hoped to build by 2020 would be indigenously developed and each be able to produce 700 megawatts of power.
By comparison, China has set an ambitious goal of having a nuclear capacity of 36,000 megawatts by 2020 - four times its current level.