Quantum, fusion and AI among next big India-US cooperation areas: Kwatra

India’s Ambassador to the US Vinay Mohan Kwatra has said quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and nuclear science are among the next frontier areas of cooperation between India and the United States.

Speaking at an interactive session during the US-India AI and Emerging Technology Forum in Washington on Friday, Kwatra identified nuclear fusion as a key area of collaboration between the two countries, alongside conventional fission technologies used in civil nuclear power projects globally.

India and the US are both part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an international nuclear fusion research project aimed at building a fusion reactor near Cadarache in France. The project includes the European Union and eight countries, including the US, Russia, India and China.

“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.

Kwatra also identified small and modular reactors as another emerging area of cooperation between India and the US.

A delegation of American nuclear companies is expected to visit India later this month to explore cooperation opportunities after New Delhi opened the civil nuclear power sector to 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 stricter liability provisions for nuclear suppliers, which global companies had viewed as a hurdle to entering the Indian market.

Following the India-US Civil Nuclear agreement signed in 2008, US companies were allotted two sites — Chhaya Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh. Westinghouse Electric Company had expressed interest in setting up six 1,000 MW nuclear power units in India.

At the forum, attended by representatives of Indian deeptech start-ups and senior US officials, Kwatra said the SHANTI Act had opened up significant opportunities for private sector participation in the nuclear sector.

“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 described biopharmaceuticals as an important priority area in the India-US partnership.

He said the biopharmaceutical sector includes several streams of collaboration between India and the US involving governments, industry and 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.