Two weeks after President Bush reversed decades of policy prohibiting U.S. nuclear power companies from selling their technology to India, Westinghouse Electric Co. has created a new executive position to oversee new business anticipated there.
The Monroeville-based nuclear engineering, design and maintenance company has promoted Meena Mutyala to the job of vice president and business leader, India strategy.
"Meena's new role is an important one as the nuclear power market in India promises to be both robust and long term," said Westinghouse President Aris Candris.
Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert declined to comment on reports that the company plans to build as many as eight reactors in India at a price of $5 billion to $7 billion each.
"It's too early to say how many we will build, but it's a very large market," Gilbert said. "We intend to pursue it vigorously."
Mutyala joined Westinghouse in 1977, serving most recently as the company's vice president of product management and engineering for the global nuclear fuel business.
Mutyala, 53, holds a physics degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai; a master's in nuclear engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Indiana Township and will continue to be based in Western Pennsylvania.
American companies had been banned since 1974 from selling nuclear technology to India because it never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The world's second most populous nation has been a democracy for 60 years, but periodic disputes with neighboring Pakistan have anti-nuclear advocates nervous that power generating materials could be converted to use for weapons of mass destruction.
Last week, the Pakistani government signed a pact with China for assistance to build more nuclear power plants. William Potter, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., said that was an expected reaction to the deal between Washington and New Delhi.
"The U.S. administration is correctly interested in forging a strategic partnership with India," as a counterweight against China's rising power, Potter said. "But to found it on nuclear energy was a mistake. We may not like it that China is now selling nuclear materials to Pakistan, but we have no one to blame but ourselves."
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