Shanti law in, US nuclear ‘mission’ on its way to tap new tie-ups

Deliberations planned during the course of the delegation’s five day schedule (May 17-21) include meetings with the Department of Atomic Energy top brass, NITI Aayog, other energy ministries and representatives of state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and NTPC Ltd.

The delegation would likely land in New Delhi on May 17 and stay until May 19, before heading to Mumbai on May 20 for a series of meetings spanning two days. US Ambassador Sergio Gor and the US Embassy staff are likely to set the agenda for the delegation’s series of formal meetings that get underway on the morning of May 18.

The Mumbai leg is likely to include meetings with India’s private sector energy players including Reliance Industries Ltd, the Adani Group, Tata Power Company Ltd, JSW Energy, Vedanta, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Tata Consulting Engineers and Hindalco Industries.

Last December, Parliament had passed the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025, marking a major shift in how India’s tightly-controlled nuclear power sector will be governed in the coming years. For the first time, the Act enabled private players to enter the operations side of this critical sector as well as areas such as fuel management, which had remained under tight public-sector control for decades.

Alongside the increased role for the private sector in nuclear plant operations, the deployment of imported Light Water Reactor-based projects, aided by foreign funding, are two outcomes in the wake of the passage of the new legislation, which opens up the possibility of more imported LWR-based nuclear projects of the kind that are being set up by the Russians in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu. India is also keen to look at the possibility of the deployment of small modular reactors or SMRs.

Although India’s civil nuclear programme has expertise in manufacturing pressurised heavy water reactors – from 220MWe PHWRs to the new 700MWe reactors – an impediment of sorts for the country’s nuclear establishment is its reactor technology. Based on heavy water and natural uranium, the PHWRs are a technology that India’s nuclear establishment has a mastery over, but one that is increasingly out of sync with the LWRs that are now the most dominant reactor type across the world. The Americans, the Russians and the French are among the leaders in LWR technology. Also, India’s dominant nuc­lear tech­no­logy – its ­main­stay PHWRs – has scalab­il­ity issues.

The government’s move to look out­wards for col­lab­or­a­tions on nuc­lear is driven by two clear policy imper­at­ives: the des­per­ate need for base load altern­at­ives to coal-fired capa­city to tide over the lim­it­a­tions of renewables; and more import­antly, the external out­reach for nuc­lear col­lab­or­a­tions is driven more by the need for cap­ital than the need for tech­no­logy, a top government official had indicated ahead of the passage of the nuclear amendments.

The SHANTI Act was passed amid Opposition’s concern over allowing private players and changes in the liability regime, particularly the whittling down of provisions fixing responsibility on equipment suppliers in the event of a nuclear accident. This new Act replaced two earlier legislations – the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 (AE Act) and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 (CLNDA) –  and effectively redrew the rules that govern India’s nuclear power sector. From who can build and operate plants and how accident liability is capped, to the role of the safety regulator and the mechanisms for dispute resolution and compensation, all of these have been tweaked or changed.