Mumbai: Under the recent Indo-Russian agreement, India will not have any constraint to proceed with the closed fuel cycle as Russia has recognised India as its equal partner as well as a responsible nuclear country, top officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited have said.

Just as in the earlier agreement on the two units of 1000 MW each Kudankulam atomic power plants in Tamil Nadu which are under construction, the current 'intent' signed between Russia and India on January 25 during President Vladimir Putin's recent visit, also has the provision for closed fuel cycle, the NPCIL officials said here.

"This is in sharp contrast to Indo-US nuclear deliberations in which the whole agenda apart from providing economic benefit to US business, it further restricts 'even' India's indigenously created technologies, under the guise of non-proliferation," they said.

In the closed nuclear fuel cycle, the nuclear fuel goes through different stages including mining, preparation of the fuel for use in reactor operation to reprocessing of spent fuel of the reactor for energy and safety management of radioactive waste.

 If the spent fuel is not reprocessed, then it is called open fuel cycle.

"Issues on spent fuel was never a problem with Russians and they have clearly said about the use of closed fuel cycle with the Russian reactors which are already under construction and those reactors (atleast four more) which will be coming up in the next decade," the officials said.