Miles to go on the nuclear front
The 2025-26 Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has certain supposedly ‘big-ticket’ ideas in the technology sector. These include the Nuclear Energy Mission, the Artificial Intelligence Mission and an increase in the allocation for the Ministry of Science and Technology to fund technology development and innovation in the private sector. She also announced a proposal for infrastructure expansion at the Indian Institutes of Technology and a multi-fold increase in the number of medical seats. All these are welcome ideas, though the timelines for their implementation and full financial implications are unclear. Most of them are not new and have been mentioned in previous Budget speeches.
The Nuclear Energy Mission is meant specifically for research and development (R&D) pertaining to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The justification for going in for SMRs is the need for progressively reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. The goal, according to the FM, is “the development of at least 100 GW of nuclear energy by 2047”. The minister said the mission would have an outlay of Rs 20,000 crore and at least five indigenously developed SMRs would be operationalised by 2033. However, she has not allocated funds for the new SMR mission in the Department of Atomic Energy’s (DAE) budget, which remains stagnant compared to the previous year. It means Sitharaman’s announcement on SMRs is only an intent.
The SMR intent, too, is not new. In her 2024 Budget speech, the minister had announced that India would go in for smaller nuclear reactors in a new push for nuclear energy; they were christened Bharat Small Reactors and Bharat Small Modular Reactors (BSMRs). In December 2024, the government told Parliament that R&D had been initiated to develop BSMRs and that “many countries have shown interest in collaborating with India” for this purpose. The deployment of these reactors will be in sectors with the need for captive power generation, it was said. If the DAE has already initiated the development of SMRs, it should have been allotted funds in this year’s Budget to pursue this work. The prefix ‘Bharat’ was dropped in Sitharaman’s 2025 speech. Instead of the ‘BSMR’ used till December 2024, she has mentioned ‘SMR’ while referring to the new nuclear initiative.
Small reactors and SMRs came on the policy radar when Niti Aayog published a paper on this subject in 2023. A ‘small reactor’ refers to a nuclear reactor (220 megawatts or MW) based on existing technology like pressurised heavy water reactors, while SMRs refer to even smaller reactors of 30-MW capacity onwards but with new designs. It is projected that such reactors could be pre-fabricated in factories and shipped to a site, reducing construction and installation time. Given their small size, such reactors would not need frequent refuelling, and could even be retrofitted in decommissioned thermal power plants. The safety, environmental and regulatory requirements for SMRs may be different from those for large reactors because SMR designs deploy passive systems and operate at low power and operating pressure. Globally, a handful of commercial SMRs are under development.
The development of nuclear energy was taken up soon after the country gained Independence. India has made substantial progress in developing indigenous capabilities and strategic output in the form of nuclear bombs. On the commercial electricity front, however, nuclear power has been lagging. Currently, India has 24 nuclear power reactors with a total installed capacity of 8,180 MW. Another 21 reactors with capacity totalling 15,300 MW are at various stages of implementation. The DAE is known for fixing long-term targets for enhancing power generation from time to time. In the 1970s, when just a couple of nuclear power plants were functional, the DAE set a target of producing 10,000 MW by 1990. In the 1980s, the target was to achieve 20,000 MW by 2000. Then the deadline was changed to 2020. This year, the goal is 100,000 MW by 2047. Adding about 92,000 MW of nuclear energy in the next two decades is like chasing a mirage.
Nuclear energy is beset with problems of high capital expenditure, fuel supplies and massive environmental and safety costs. Take, for instance, the Gorakhpur nuclear plant in Fatehabad district of Haryana, with a planned capacity of four 700-MW units. The environmental assessment for the project was approved in December 2013, and the government okayed the first phase in February 2014. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board granted a siting licence in July 2015. Construction was due to begin in June 2015, with the first unit being scheduled to become operational by 2021. It was not until November 2020 that the pouring of the first nuclear safety-related concrete took place. In 2022, the completion deadline was revised to 2028, and now it appears that the first two units will be operational in 2032. The project is slated to cost Rs 40,000 crore. Anyone projecting nuclear power as an option for energy security should keep these ground realities in mind.
In her speech, Sitharaman also spoke about ‘active participation’ of the private sector in achieving the ambitious target of producing 100,000 MW. For this, she said, the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act would be amended. Civil liability for nuclear accidents has been a sticking point for Indian private companies willing to participate in nuclear power production as well as foreign nuclear suppliers. The liability law passed in 2010 limits the third-party liability to Rs 1,500 crore and makes the plant operator responsible for it. If an accident occurs due to a faulty plant (as happened in Bhopal in 1984), the operator could take up the matter legally with the supplier. This clause in the liability rules has kept foreign suppliers away from the Indian market. In any case, civil liability is a serious matter and the government must rethink the cap if it has learnt any lesson from the Bhopal tragedy. High-sounding goals alone won’t lead to power generation.
