Nuclear energy will grow with private sector entry just like space did: Jitendra Singh

Underlining that it was very important to rapidly expand the nuclear power generation capacity, Singh said, “there are some additional concerns in the nuclear energy sector which have to be taken into account.”

In the Budget speech on February 1, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had proposed to open up the much-guarded nuclear sector to boost private investments. She had proposed that the government would amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act to facilitate the entry of private companies in nuclear power generation.

Traditionally, nuclear power plants in India have been owned and operated only by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and its fully-owned subsidiary Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam (BHAVINI).

In the last few years, a policy change has allowed public sector units like National Thermal Power Corporation to form joint ventures with NPCIL to own and operate nuclear power plants.

India currently has an installed nuclear power capacity of 7,480 MW, and plans to triple this to 22,800 MW by 2031-32 once the 10 under-construction plants come onboard. But it would require another five-fold expansion from there to attain the 100 GW target by 2047.

“It is a challenging target, but not unachievable. It is very realistic,” Singh said. Citing India’s space economy whose current value as per one estimate is around $8.4 billion, and projected to grow to $44 billion by 2033, he said, “Once a certain threshold has been reached, and the right atmospheres created, the growth can be very fast.”

Sitharaman had also announced a Rs 20,000 crore R&D mission for development of small modular reactors (SMRs), the new generation of nuclear reactors that are relatively portable, mass producible in factories, cheaper, and safer compared to traditional reactors. India is targeting the deployment of at least five of these indigenously developed reactors by 2033.

Singh said alongside the SMRs, India would continue to build the traditional, larger, nuclear reactors as well.