New Delhi, Aug. 17 : Chief Scientific Adviser to British Foreign Office, Professor Robin Grimes, has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to UK later this year will be ‘something to celebrate’.
“We are very much looking forward to the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to UK. Officially we are thinking about the importance of engineering and technology collaborations between our two countries, which is going to underpin our relations for decades to come,” he said.
Professor Grimes said Britain and India have plans under the Indo-British Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement signed in 2010 to collaborate on safety and security issues relating to nuclear power generation.
“We are thinking of collaborating on safety-security issues , safety in particular.or research to understand the degradation process, mechanism predicting the way the material behave and system behind its stability,” he told the Indian Science Journal in an exclusive interview.
Professor Grimes, who was on a visit to India, suggested that India should pursue nuclear power generation if it makes economic sense.
He said India’s uranium reserves could last for several hundred years, longer than fossil fuels, if appropriate technology is adopted.
“The fuel would last for many many hundreds of years, far far longer than fossil fuels would last, but there are challenges in using the fuel in that way,” said Professor Grimes.
Professor Grimes’ visit to New Delhi and Mumbai is billed as preparatory to the forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Modi to UK later this year.
The last Prime Minister of India to visit Britain was Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2006. (ANI)