Parliament clears Shanti Bill, opens up nuclear sector to private players

A day after the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025, was passed in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha passed the Bill amid demands by the Opposition for referring the legislation to a parliamentary panel.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that the Bill had taken over a year of consultations with industry leaders, potential business partners, startups and scientists.

“The Bill is slightly unorthodox in a sense that opening up the sector to private partners was not expected,” he said.

The minister said that technology has evolved. “We are now into small modular reactors. There will now be reactors that will give power in dense areas. The risk of catastrophe has now changed,” he added.

Allaying safety concerns raised by the Opposition, Singh said that India’s nuclear plants were located very far from seismic frequencies.

Acknowledging that the BJP had voiced opposition in the past, the party said the scenario today was different from 2010. “The safety concerns were different then. The opening up of several sectors have been rewarding. Safety SOP is the same as it was before. Multi-Level security is being upgraded. Exploration is allowed to the private partner but mining of uranium more than a certain quantity will not be allowed,” Singh said.

He pointed out that when the NDA government came to power in 2014, the nuclear power capacity was just 4.7 GW; now it is 8.9 GW. He said this capacity was just 3 per cent of the required power generation. To scale it up to at least 10 per cent by 2047, a nuclear energy mission was launched in this Budget.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh cautioned that the Bill marked a decisive break from more than seven decades of state-led nuclear development, warning that public sector institutions and indigenous scientific capacity were being sidelined in favour of private players.

He argued that India’s atomic energy programme had been built patiently since Independence on public investment, long-term scientific vision and strategic autonomy. This legacy should not be diluted in the pursuit of speed or capacity targets.

Pointing to India’s vast thorium reserves, which account for nearly a quarter of the world’s total, Ramesh said the country remained paradoxically energy-insecure because of its uranium deficit.

He also argued that India should urgently reorient its strategy to accelerate progress towards the thorium-based third stage, instead of relying on imported technology or external private interests.

The Congress MP also warned against excessive dependence on foreign models driven by private capital, noting that even countries such as France operate their nuclear reactors through state-owned entities.

Responding to the criticism, BJP MP Kiran Choudhary defended the Bill, saying it was designed to modernise an outdated and fragmented legal framework while maintaining strict safety oversight.

She said that nuclear expansion had long been slowed by policy paralysis, and said the new law would streamline licensing, safety approvals and regulatory processes. Choudhary added that the government was building on the foundations laid by earlier administrations, including those under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and carrying that vision forward under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with adequate safeguards firmly in place.