Following his talks in Paris, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington for an official working visit to meet President Donald J Trump, becoming only the fourth foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump took office. Before his talks with Trump, Modi held meetings with Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; National Security Advisor (NSA) Michael Waltz; the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk; and Indian-American politician Vivek Ramawamy.
Following his talks with Trump, the US Embassy in India published the text of a joint statement announcing a new initiative – the US-India COMPACT (Catalysing Opportunities for Military Partnership, Accelerated Commerce & Technology) for the 21st Century.
The 33-paragraph statement covered six main areas: Defence, Trade & Investment, Energy Security, Technology & Innovation, Multilateral Co-operation, and People-to-People Co-operation. The US and India undertook to “take an integrated approach to strengthen and deepen bilateral trade across the goods and services sector, and will work towards increasing market access, reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepening supply chain integration”.
On Energy Security, the statement noted: “Realising the consequential role of the US and India, as leading producers and consumers, in driving the global energy landscape, the leaders re-committed to the US-India Energy Security Partnership, including in oil, gas, and civil nuclear energy.”
Paragraph 14 focused specifically on nuclear energy. It stated: “The leaders announced their commitment to fully realise the US-India 123 Civil Nuclear Agreement by moving forward with plans to work together to build US-designed nuclear reactors in India through large scale localisation and possible technology transfer.” Both sides welcomed India’s recent Budget announcement in which the government undertook to amend the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA) for nuclear reactors.
Modi and Trump “further decided to establish bilateral arrangements in accordance with CLNDA, that would address the issue of civil liability and facilitate the collaboration of Indian and US industry in the production and deployment of nuclear reactors”. The statement said this “will unlock plans to build large US-designed reactors and enable collaboration to develop, deploy and scale up nuclear power generation with advanced small modular reactors”.
The US and India signed the 123 Agreement in 2008, after India – which is not a signatory of the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty – reached a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. This deal took more than three years to come into effect as it had to go through several complex stages, including amendment of US domestic law, especially the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, a civil-military nuclear Separation Plan in India, and the grant of an exemption for India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) that had been formed mainly in response to India’s first nuclear test in 1974 and had effectively blocked Indian civil nuclear trade.
However, since 2008, there has been little progress in nuclear trade with the US or France , largely because of the 2010 CLNDA, which essentially holds supplier companies liable for any damage caused by their technologies. Only Russia was undeterred by the liability regime and proceeded to construct additional reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.
India hopes that the CLNDA amendments promised in the recent budget will encourage Western suppliers of reactor technologies. After the adoption of the law in 2010, India took a number of steps aimed at easing its conditions, but this was not enough. US company General Electric abandoned plans to build a NPP in India, while Westinghouse and EDF chose to slow walk the negotiation process. These companies have sites selected with the French considering building six EPR units and Westinghouse six AP-1000 units.
During a joint press conference after his talks with Trump, Modi noted: “Americans are familiar with President Trump’s motto, Make America Great Again, or MAGA. The people of India are also moving towards development at a fast pace with the determination of Viksit Bharat [Developed India] 2047 on the track of heritage and development. “If I say in the language of America, Developed India means Make India Great Again – MIGA. When the United States and India work together, i.e. MAGA plus MIGA, the MEGA Partnership for prosperity is formed. And this mega spirit gives new scale and scope to our goals.”
Summarising Modi’s US trip, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said there was an agreement to realise the potential in civil nuclear energy, building US-designed nuclear reactors in India, and taking forward that process also through large-scale localisation as well as technology transfer. “The two countries have been discussing for some time, cooperation in small modular reactors and that is again something that was flagged today.”
He added: “The obstacles in realising this cooperation in previous years on account of some of the legal provisions that have remained in place in India have already begun to be addressed. You would have noticed the announcements that have been made in the budget in this regard, and we imagine that progress on these issues will enable us to realise the promise of cooperation between India and the US in this very important sector.”
