Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech, announced a ₹20,000 crore Nuclear Energy Mission for R&D into small reactors and reiterating the (new) target of 100 GW of installed nuclear power capacity by 2047.
The government wants to operationalise five small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2033. To enable private sector participation in SMRs, the government also intends to amend the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act.
The Budget announcements can be broken into three elements — the target, SMRs and the amendments to the nuclear law.
‘100 GW by 2047’
The ‘100 GW by 2047’ is a reiteration of the latest target the government has been speaking about in recent times. But nuclear power capacity targets have been swinging wildly over the last several years. Earlier, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used to speak of 35 GW by 2022 and 60 GW by 2032. Then, under the new government, the target was revised to 63 GW by 2032. However, the target was revised downwards to 22,480 MW by 2031-32 (Rajya Sabha, August 8, 2024). Alongside, the government began speaking of 1,00,000 MW by 2047.
Today, India has nuclear power capacity of 8,180 MW. If India achieves 22,480 MW by 2031-32, it would need to add 77,520 MW in 15 years — a tall order, going by India’s nuclear power track record.
Nuclear law
The Atomic Energy Act needs to be amended to allow private sector participation in nuclear energy. By all accounts, this will be done.
Amending the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (CLND) Act is contentious and calls for tip-toeing through a legal minefield. The very mention of the amendment has got the Opposition up in arms; Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, has already posted on X, saying, “To appease Mr Trump, the FM announces that the Act will be amended.”
The CLND Act is meant to govern who will pay in the case of a nuclear mishap — the government, the plant operator or the equipment supplier. As it stands today, the operator’s liability is capped at ₹500 crore, beyond which the government will pay. The international Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for Nuclear Damage says that the operator’s liability is “absolute”. The operator (which has been the public sector NPCIL) is allowed to add a clause in the agreement with the equipment supplier for “recourse”, which global equipment suppliers, such as Westinghouse, do not like. In the absence of such a clause, the equipment supplier becomes liable only if the mishap could be traced to a fault in the equipment.
The government is also reported to be thinking of setting up a Nuclear Audit Authority, which might need to be anchored in some legislative provision.
