SHANTI Bill has fully solved third-party liability issue: Holtec CEO

India's SHANTI nuclear law aligns liability with global norms, easing investor concerns and opening India's nuclear sector to greater private and foreign investment, says Holtec CEO Kris Singh

With the new nuclear power legislation — Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025 — India has joined the mainstream of global nuclear energy and commerce, says Kris Singh, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of US-based nuclear technology company Holtec International, in an interview with Sudheer Pal Singh. Edited excerpts:

 

How do you look at India's new nuclear energy legislation and the market here for nuclear power?

 

The global business community believes that India has certainly gotten its act together, and its economy, under the current government, is poised for an even faster rate of growth. At the heart of it all lies energy. The SHANTI Bill that has just been cleared by Parliament shows that the Indian government is responding to the call from the international investors that the country’s nuclear sector is emerging as the most hospitable area for them to invest in. Before this Bill, the investors used to say they do not want to go to India because the liability is so large that even a single error could wipe them out. So, you can say that India is now joining the mainstream of nuclear energy generation and commerce. Although the Bill does not explicitly address the extent of private capital that would be allowed to flow into nuclear, I hope the government will move to privatise nuclear generation completely so that it does not have to put in public money to build plants. In this new scenario, the government's role will be to sponsor research and development (R&D), provide security to the infrastructure, and to ensure that private companies are operating nuclear plants with world-class safety and security.

 

So, you are saying the government should not be a majority shareholder in nuclear projects?

 

There is no reason for the government to have any equity ownership in nuclear projects. It is strange that a country thinks that it should have 51 per cent stake to protect public health and safety. The government can have a 20 per cent stake and demand that it will appoint 4 out of 10 directors on the nuclear plant’s board. Thus, the government can control the operations in a nuclear project by law, instead of equity ownership. The day-to-day decisions can be made by the plant management appointed by the board, members of which are elected by the investors. I am not in favour of bureaucracy running the industry. If India today is not a big player in nuclear, maybe it is because the government runs the nation’s nuclear programme. New Delhi is blessed with a large cadre of brilliant IAS officers dealing with public policy matters but they should be making policy, not running nuclear plants, or for that matter, any industrial enterprise.

 

In the case of a highly sensitive industry like nuclear, if the government wants to have a controlling stake so that if, God forbid, an incident occurs, at least it has the authority to take a call. Is that not a fair argument?

 

It is fair but only to a point. If it is not designed and operated safely, any plant is risky, not just a nuclear plant. Unfortunately, the popular understanding of nuclear energy technology is misplaced. In the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011, lots of people died because of the horrendous Tsunami, which was way stronger than the design-basis tsunami selected by the plant’s owner and the plant designer. The horror of Fukushima was not because of a nuclear disaster, it was because of the failure in the plant’s design specification that understated the threat of tsunami. Nuclear plants can be run through proper laws and controls. Unshackle the nuclear industry from day-to-day government control, and have the AERB (Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) put its inspectors at the plants who are armed with sovereign authority in all matters related to safety. That is how it should be done. The government-run model does not have a good record: Chernobyl, which blew up in 1986, is a textbook example of a 100 per cent state-controlled nuclear enterprise. It is okay for the government to have investment in nuclear energy but that should not be the only way for the government to exercise the needed control. Government investment in nuclear energy should be directed surgically where it is needed, not everywhere.

 

In its current form, the nuclear Bill does not allow private companies to mine uranium. How do you look at that vis-a-vis the international norm?

 

Both mining and enrichment of Uranium are done by private industry all over the world. Safety aspects can be controlled by the government, but you do not necessarily need a government-run workforce in these areas too. Countries like the US and Canada are good examples of this. Somehow, people think that nuclear energy is fundamentally unsafe. That is not true. Also, in case we build SMRs (small modular reactors) in India, we will have our spent fuel stored below the ground, right at the nuclear plant. Technology makes that possible. There will be less radiation from the fuel below than from the sun above. That is how safe it is. In short, the technical solution exists. Politics needs to align with the technology that exists today.

 

Do you think striking off the supplier's liability clause from the legislation will make India's civil nuclear regime more investor-friendly?

 

Yes, it will. SHANTI has solved the issue of third-party liability in a proper way. We in the industry have been pushing for this change in law. Under SHANTI, I believe the liability of the operator has been aligned with international norms, and the operator is allowed to devolve some of his/her liability burden to other counterparties such as the reactor designer, architect-engineer, and the constructor. Depending on the circumstances, some participants in the project may be willing to take a defined risk. Others won't. You don't necessarily want those who would not. If a supplier is afraid of his/her equipment and does not want to take the liability, then you do not want that kind of a supplier. In fact, a reasonable liability requirement is a good discriminator. Ensuring supplier liability through a binding contract is the right way. It is a way of counteracting the tendency that may exist among some suppliers to cheapen their product to win contracts.

 

What are the top two things to keep in mind when India moves through this transition from large nuclear plants to SMRs?

 

I am a strong advocate for India to adopt the SMR as the primary vehicle to generate nuclear power. It is important to understand the basic idea and the intent of an SMR. People mistakenly think that an SMR is mostly about low power output while the basic idea is that in the case of a "credible postulated" accident, the radiation will not travel beyond the plant's boundary at a level that can jeopardise public health and safety. Thus, in building, say, two sets of SMR-300 plants (total 1,200 megawatt electrical, or Mwe, net), output is better than building a large plant of equivalent capacity, because the large plant will require a large exclusion zone. SMRs can be deployed to meet local energy needs instead of wheeling power over lines for long distances from a large plant. Building long distance transmission lines and securing them against environmental hazards will be an expensive undertaking. The SMR, used as a means of distributed generation, is also socially more equitable for creating homogeneous economic growth across the country. I suggest two specific points in response to your question: AERB should ensure that the country does not end up with a menagerie of designs that happened in the US in the 1970s. India has wide variations in environmental demand, such as earthquake intensity and water availability. The regulator should demand that the design being offered can be deployed across wide swathes of the country. Standardising the design would also help cut costs. Two, it must be ensured that the plant uses a fuel design that is widely available, so that the country’s plants can be supplied by multiple global suppliers. The contract with the fuel suppliers should be crafted to incentivise them to set their shops in India.