Nuclear rebound leaves India with challenges amid global clean-energy push

The global momentum for nuclear energy is gathering steam amid a push for net zero. India too has drawn up plans, but it has to deal with several tasks, including rolling out legislative reforms

After the disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, nuclear power is enjoying a bit of a renaissance.

 

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the holy grail of energy forecasters, makes no fewer than 278 mentions of the word ‘nuclear’ in its World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2025, nearly twice the number in the 2024 edition. 

And, for the first time since the UN’s annual climate summit (COP) commenced in 1995, “nuclear energy” was included in the Global Stocktake — an agreement that assesses where the world stands on its climate objectives — at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. COP30 is underway in Belem, Brazil.

 

There is more than 70 Gw of new nuclear capacity under construction globally, one of the highest in the last 30 years, the IEA says, with new business models emerging to kickstart 30 Gw of additional capacity for small modular reactors (SMRs), a nascent technology. In India, nuclear power may provide 190 terawatt hours (TWh) of additional electricity for data centres by 2035, equivalent to a tenth of the country’s overall annual power consumption. 

“In the long term, without nuclear and hydro, it is difficult to achieve 100 per cent carbon neutrality,’’ said R R Rashmi, distinguished fellow at the thinktank,  the Energy and Resources Institute (Teri). But the process is tortuous, senior industry officials said, and can take over a decade. 

Barring China, nuclear is a tough sell and a risky business globally— an American nuclear reactor project called Vogtle was delayed by over 7 years, as costs doubled to $35 billion and technology provider Westinghouse went bankrupt. 

“Several nuclear energy projects in the United States and Europe face project delays and cost overruns, and the industry is still grappling with public concerns,” the IEA said in WEO 2025. “Yet momentum for nuclear power is building, driven by concerns about rising carbon dioxide emissions or energy security.” 

Latching on 

India has latched on to the global nuclear momentum, not out of fear of being left behind but firm in its belief that nuclear energy is critical to meeting its 2070 net-zero emissions goal, senior government officials said. 

In 2023, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre said there were 449 nuclear power reactors globally, of which more than 350

were light water reactors. Of these, 306 were pressurised water reactors or PWRs—a modern, safer reactor technology requiring less maintenance. There are 50 older-technology pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). India has 24 PHWRs, and Russia supplied two PWRs at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.

 

At COP28, countries representing 70 per cent of installed nuclear capacity pledged to triple global capacity by 2050. However, India plans to multiply installations by as much as 13 times to 100 Gw by 2047. That amounts to adding 92 Gw of nuclear capacity in the next 22 years — when it took India 78 years to get to 8 Gw. 

New Delhi’s confidence in reaching nuclear energy targets stems from its success in scaling up solar power capacity by 44 times in the past decade. But the comparison stops here. Solar, wind and nuclear are all clean energy sources, but of varying complexity when it comes to project installation and execution. 

It takes 18 months to bring solar projects to production and around 36 months for onshore wind. But the generating power from splitting an atom to produce nuclear fission can take 12-15 years, according to data from the World Nuclear Association.

So, does that leave India’s plans dead in the water? Perhaps not, if the government manages to push through long-delayed reforms to India’s 1962 Atomic Energy Law and 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA), according to a senior official involved in the legislation. 

Need for reforms 

However, introducing reforms to privatise and address liability — as amendments to the two Acts propose — in a sector controlled by the Department of Atomic Energy and state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation is not easy, the official said. 

“There is a need for entry of private sector for more than four years,” said R Srikanth, dean of the School of Natural Sciences at the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Advanced Studies. 

Given a potential price tag of ₹25 trillion ($282 billion) to build 100 Gw of nuclear capacity, it is imperative that the private sector must be involved, said Arun Nayak, former member of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board at an event in Delhi. 

Amendments to both laws were expected to be passed in the monsoon session in August but may now be tabled in the winter session, the official said. Globally, liability rests with the operator, but Clause 17(b) of the CLNDA gives the operator a “right of recourse” in the event “the nuclear incident has resulted as a consequence of an act of supplier or his employee.” Section 17(b) and Section 46 of the Act expose suppliers, Indian or foreign, to unlimited liabilities in the event of a major accident. The

private sector has refused to participate in projects unless the laws are amended.

 

“The activities related to the amendment in the Acts involve inter-ministerial consultations as well as scientific solution. These activities may require time and in view of this it is not feasible to give a timeline,’’ said Jitendra Singh, minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, in a reply to Parliament in April.

 

Moreover, India’s ambitions would require a parallel increase in uranium procurement. India's demand for imported natural uranium for operating and proposed PHWRs under safeguards is about 9,000 MTU for the period 2025 to 2033, Singh told Parliament. MTU stands for megawatt-days per metric tonne, a unit to measure burnup in nuclear fuel. 

“We have a serious situation as far as the availability of uranium is concerned,” said an official from a top private generator. India has uranium but it is costly because the percentage of uranium in the ore is low. 

“With a long runway to new uranium production, India will likely have to negotiate some new contracts with foreign suppliers if it wants to avoid its uranium stockpile shrinking over the coming years,” according to Nuclear Intelligence Weekly. 

Cost pressures 

Nuclear power projects in Europe and the US in recent years were completed eight years later than planned and cost 2.5-times as much as originally estimated, the IEA said.

 

China trends toward $2 per watt across 33 reactors under construction but the Vogtle project came in at $10 per watt, said Jamie Skaar, a US energy consultant on LinkedIn. 

China has 58 operating reactors, with 33 more under construction — accounting for close to half of all nuclear capacity under construction, the IEA said. Chinese reactor design (Hualong One) is standardised with a localised supply chain, a trained workforce and reactor manufacturers operating at scale, Skaar said. 

The US energy department says that optimal nuclear economics requires 10-20 reactors to be built sequentially, without a break. “The first reactor may cost $10 per watt and when you get to the 15th costs drop to $3 per watt.’’ 

India needs to scale up to bring down prices, said Srikanth. IPHWR is New Delhi’s way of emulating China’s strategy to deploy a fleet of 10 less-advanced PHWRs, a 7 Gw-ambition: But progress has been slow and the technology of Canadian origin is from the 1970s. New-generation technology is critical to take India’s nuclear programme ahead, Nayak said. 

This March, NTPC sought bids for up to 15 Gw of new nuclear power — from indigenous reactors. While indigenous lPHWRs-based projects cost $2.50-$3 per watt, western technology costs twice as much, a senior industry official said. Russian technology deployed by Rosatom for the Kudankulam project in Tamil Nadu, India’s biggest nuclear power facility, may cost $3-4 per watt. 

Siting reactors 

India must also factor in approvals and land acquisition. The greenfield Gorakhpur nuclear power project in Haryana should have been operational this year. But for a project approved in 2014, civil work didn't begin until 2022, and commissioning is expected only by 2032. 

There were other surprises at Gorakhpur. Contractors realised that the foundation data they had did not identify the right soil type. “It is a soil site with no hard rock,” Singh told Parliament. "”On soft alluvial soil, load-bearing is an issue,” especially for massive reactors, the official said. That meant the originally designed foundation needed to be modified. The process took significant time, leading to delay in construction, Singh said. 

India may not find the going easy to harness nuclear energy as a net-zero strategy, but it cannot afford to go slow on

this key renewable source. Attracting private firms and sorting out the liability issue will be key to this mission.