India will receive uranium from Russia to run two atomic power plants that have struggled to find fuel after the United States stopped supplies more than three decades ago, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Moscow's decision to supply fuel to India's Tarapur nuclear power plants came nearly two weeks after New Delhi and Washington sealed a landmark deal which aims to give India access to atomic equipment and fuel from the United States, and eventually from other nuclear nations.
Russia, a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) - an informal club of nations that control global nuclear trade - cannot supply fuel to countries like India which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But Moscow would send the shipment under an NSG "Safety Exception Clause" which allows fuel transfers if there is reason to believe that starving a reactor of fuel could result in a nuclear hazard, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
"At India's request, Russia has agreed to supply a limited amount of uranium fuel for the safeguarded units 1 and 2 of the Tarapur atomic power station," Sarna told a news conference.
"The shortage of fuel for Tarapur would have affected its continued operations under reliable and safe conditions," Sarna said, adding that Russia had informed the NSG about the move.
The Tarapur plants were built by US firm General Electric in the 1960s but Washington stopped fuel supplies after New Delhi conducted its first nuclear tests in 1974. The two plants received fuel intermittently from France and Russia and the last supplies were made by Moscow in 2001, provoking American protests.
Russia's latest decision coincides with a trip to New Delhi by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who is due to make a two-day visit to India later this week.
The two countries were likely to sign a deal during the visit under which Russia would supply India with 60 tonnes of uranium, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, quoting Indian sources.
The India-US civilian nuclear co-operation deal aims to reverse three decades of global curbs on supplying atomic equipment and fuel to India, a nuclear weapons state. But the deal needs to be approved by a sceptical US Congress and backed by the NSG before India can get access to foreign nuclear technology and fuel.