India can reprocess spent fuel from Kudankulam N-Plant: Russia

India can reprocess its spent fuel from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP)as it has its own facility with highly qualified staff, Russia said today.
"Spent fuel is important to India and it has its own facility with a highly qualified staff. We don't have the responsibility of the spent fuel from the Kudankulam plant and India can reprocess its spent fuel or even store it," Anzhelika Khaperskaya, Chief Manager of Spent Nuclear Fuel System Creation of Rosatom.
She was responding to a question on whether Russia will reprocess India's spent fuel from the KKNPP units.
The country is constructing a facility under which it will take spent fuel from 14 other countries, extract vital elements from it to use it for its Fast Breeder Reactors and other purposes. She added that as far as India was concerned, India was not on its agenda in this project.

"Under the existing agreement, India has to take care of its spent fuel. If India wants Russia to reprocess its spent fuel then there has to be a separate agreement under which modalities have to be specified," she said.
Under its three-stage nuclear programme, India too requires spent fuel and considers it as a vital fuel for its Fast Breeder Reactors. While the talks of Indo-US nuclear deal were on, the issue of spent fuel was very a major irritant. While India insisted on maintaining its right to reprocess the spent fuel, the US was not willing as it thought the spent fuel could be used for defence purpose.