Washington, May 9 (PTI) Quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and nuclear science are among the next frontier areas of cooperation for India and the US, India's Ambassador to the US Vinay Mohan Kwatra has said.
Speaking at an interactive session at the US-India AI and Emerging Technology Forum here on Friday, Kwatra flagged nuclear fusion as an area of cooperation between the two countries, in addition to the conventional fission technologies used in civil nuclear power projects across the world.
India and the US are part of the international nuclear fusion research experiment to build a fusion reactor near Cadarache in France. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has the European Union and eight countries, including the US, Russia, India and China as members.
"I would even single out nuclear here because there are parts of nuclear which are of course old and established, but there are parts which are emerging, nuclear fusion in particular," Kwatra said at the forum organised by the USISPF, ORF America and the Motwani Jadeja Foundation on the sidelines of the AI+ Expo here.
The Indian envoy also listed small and modular reactors, which is a new technology, as an area of interest for cooperation between the two countries.
A delegation of American nuclear companies is scheduled to visit India later this month to explore areas of cooperation after New Delhi opened up the civil nuclear power sector for private participation last year.
India enacted the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act in December last year, replacing the Atomic Energy Act of 1964 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (CNLD) Act of 2010. The CNLD Act had tougher liability provisions for nuclear suppliers, which global companies found to be an impediment in exploring the Indian market.
After the landmark India-US Civil Nuclear agreement of 2008, US companies were allotted two sites – Chhaya Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh. Westinghouse Electric Company had evinced interest in setting up six 1,000 MW nuclear power units in India.
At the forum, which saw the participation of representatives of deeptech start-ups from India and senior US officials, Kwatra said the SHANTI Act essentially unlocks the massive ability of the private sector to participate in the nuclear domain.
"Nuclear fusion is, again, one of those areas where if you combine it, for example, with the deployment of AI in optimising the progress of nuclear fusion technology, and later on, hopefully in a few years' time, if the quantum compute through quantum advancement leads us to that space where you bring in new capacities of compute into nuclear fusion, you may be looking at something really exciting," Kwatra said.
The Indian envoy also listed biopharmaceuticals as a very important priority area in the India-US partnership.
He said the area of biopharmaceuticals has multiple substreams under which India and the US were partnering, not just at the level of the government and the industry, but also between the universities.
"It's an aspect which is not highlighted publicly very often, but I think it is one of the very strong driving features of our partnership, which is how the researchers and the scientific community between our two countries come together to build on each of these areas of cooperation," Kwatra said.