For the first time, a top executive of the Indian nuclear power establishment has urged early conclusion of the nuclear deal with the United States to help ease the acute shortage of uranium fuel, which now is causing a steep drop in nuclear power production to less than 50 per cent of capacity. "The reactors which are in operation stream function at 48 per cent efficiency due to lack of the uranium fuel. Due to a host of reasons, we are facing a severe fuel shortage," said Dr Shreyans Kumar Jain, chairman and managing director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the agency spearheading the country's nuclear power programme. Dr Jain attributed the fall in drastic production in power to the severe shortage of uranium. "There is a mismatch in the supply and demand. You can call it shortage of uranium. We need uranium very badly," Dr Jain told this newspaper. He called for immediate finalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal to offset the present dismal performance of the country's nuclear reactors, rated as the best by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which supervises and assesses the functioning of nuclear reactors all over the world.