⚛️ Science & TechMAINS · GS3.13 · GS2.18

SHANTI Act opens nuclear sector to private players

India's 2025 nuclear law and the Nuclear Energy Mission framed talks with a visiting United States industry delegation on private investment.

What happened

A high-level United States industry delegation drawn from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) met Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh to discuss private investment in India's nuclear sector.
The talks centred on India's Nuclear Energy Mission, the recent policy reforms opening the sector to private and foreign players, and the widening India–United States cooperation in clean energy and critical technologies.
The Minister confirmed that India has enacted the SHANTI Act, 2025 to facilitate greater private and foreign participation in nuclear energy; the implementation framework under the Act is being finalised.
He restated the Viksit Bharat 2047 target of lifting nuclear power capacity from the present 8.8 GW to 100 GW by 2047, and said India is advancing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) backed by an allocation of nearly ₹20,000 crore.
Secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Dr Rajesh S. Gokhale and officials of the Department of Atomic Energy took part; ongoing projects such as the Westinghouse AP1000 at Kovvada and LIGO-India were reviewed.

Background & context

India's civil nuclear programme has historically been a closed, state-run domain. Operation and ownership of nuclear power plants have rested almost entirely with the public-sector Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), with research and the fuel cycle under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Two pieces of legislation have framed and, in practice, constrained the sector for decades. The Atomic Energy Act, 1962 reserved the production, ownership and use of atomic energy for the Central Government and its undertakings, effectively barring private operators. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 created a supplier-liability provision that allowed an operator, after paying compensation for a nuclear incident, to seek recourse against equipment suppliers — a clause widely seen as deterring foreign and private vendors from entering the Indian market.

The SHANTI Act, 2025 sits against that backdrop. It is the legislative expression of a reform direction signalled in the Union Budget, where the government announced a Nuclear Energy Mission and flagged amendments to both the 1962 and the 2010 statutes to bring in private capital. The visiting delegation's interest follows from this opening: NEI is the policy and trade association of the United States nuclear industry, while USISPF is a Washington- and Delhi-based business advocacy body that works on the bilateral commercial relationship. Their engagement reflects long-running attempts to operationalise the 2008 India–United States civil nuclear agreement (the "123 Agreement"), which removed India from a global trade isolation on nuclear commerce but whose commercial promise was blunted by the liability regime. The current talks therefore mark an attempt to convert that two-decade-old diplomatic opening into actual plant construction and technology flow.

The discussion also nests inside a broader technology framework. Dr Singh located the cooperation within the U.S.-India TRUST Initiative — Transforming the Relationship Utilising Strategic Technology — launched during the meeting between Prime Minister Modi and United States President Donald Trump on 13 February 2025. TRUST is built around trusted technology partnerships, resilient supply chains and innovation ecosystems, and it spans artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, quantum technologies, advanced materials, critical minerals, energy and space technologies. Nuclear cooperation is one strand within this umbrella, which itself succeeds the earlier initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) that the two governments had used to structure high-technology collaboration.

For Prelims

SHANTI Act, 2025 — enacted to enable private and foreign participation in India's nuclear energy sector; the implementation framework under the Act is being finalised (source: PIB release).
What the Act loosens: the historical bar on non-government players that flowed from the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 (which reserved atomic energy for the Centre) and the supplier-recourse chill of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010.
Nuclear Energy Mission — the umbrella programme for the capacity push; target is to raise installed nuclear capacity from 8.8 GW (present) to 100 GW by 2047, aligned with Viksit Bharat 2047.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — compact factory-built reactors (typically up to about 300 MWe per unit) backed by an allocation of nearly ₹20,000 crore; collaboration sought in micro-reactors, AI-enabled nuclear safety, scientific computing and nuclear energy modelling.
Westinghouse AP1000 at Kovvada — a proposed large light-water reactor project in Andhra Pradesh, reviewed in the talks; an example of the long-pending United States-vendor projects the reforms aim to unlock.
LIGO-India — a gravitational-wave observatory jointly implemented by the DAE and DST with the United States LIGO Laboratory and the National Science Foundation, approved with a budgetary provision of ₹2,600 crore.
Indo-U.S. Civil Nuclear Energy Working Group (CNEWG) — the bilateral channel coordinating civil nuclear cooperation; other strands reviewed included Fermilab accelerator partnerships, rare-earth collaboration and hydrogen production.
Administering chain: the civil nuclear sector is steered by the Department of Atomic Energy (which reports to the Prime Minister), with the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) as the safety regulator and NPCIL as the principal operator.
Nodal minister here: Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology, who also holds the Atomic Energy and Space portfolios.
What it is NOT: SHANTI is not a privatisation of the regulator or of weapons-grade activity, and it does not repeal the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 wholesale — it is a reform to admit private and foreign capital into civil nuclear power. The TRUST Initiative is not a nuclear-only pact; nuclear is one sector within a multi-domain technology umbrella. SMRs are not the same as conventional large reactors such as the AP1000 — they are smaller, modular and factory-assembled.
The set to hold together: the four statutes/bodies a question can pair — Atomic Energy Act 1962 · Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act 2010 · SHANTI Act 2025 · AERB (regulator); and the project set — Kovvada (AP1000) · LIGO-India · SMRs · CNEWG · Fermilab.

For UPSC: SHANTI Act, 2025 = private and foreign entry into civil nuclear energy; the Nuclear Energy Mission targets 100 GW by 2047 from 8.8 GW today; SMRs get nearly ₹20,000 crore; LIGO-India is a DAE–DST project of ₹2,600 crore; TRUST Initiative (13 Feb 2025) is the wider tech umbrella.

Why it matters

India's nuclear share in electricity generation has remained small — under 3 per cent — for decades, despite an early start and indigenous reactor capability. The binding constraints have been capital and technology access, not ambition. Two reforms address those directly. By admitting private and foreign capital, the SHANTI Act, 2025 widens the pool of investment beyond what a single public-sector operator can mobilise, which matters when the stated goal is a more-than-tenfold capacity jump to 100 GW within roughly two decades. By signalling movement on the liability question that the 2010 law created, the reform also lowers the chief deterrent that kept United States and other foreign vendors on the sidelines after the 2008 civil nuclear deal.

The SMR push addresses a different problem — the long gestation, large land footprint and concentrated risk of conventional gigawatt-scale plants. Smaller modular units can be sited closer to demand centres, deployed in stages, and potentially repurpose retiring coal-plant sites and grids, which is relevant to a decarbonisation pathway that still leans heavily on coal. Nuclear power offers firm, low-carbon baseload generation that complements variable solar and wind, so a credible nuclear scale-up strengthens the feasibility of India's net-zero-by-2070 commitment. The cooperation also carries a strategic logic: locating nuclear within the TRUST umbrella ties it to resilient supply chains and trusted-partner sourcing in critical minerals, advanced materials and computing — areas where India is seeking to reduce dependence on single-country supply.

For Mains

Anchor

The SHANTI Act, 2025 and the Nuclear Energy Mission can anchor an answer on energy security and the role of nuclear power in India's clean-energy transition, or on reforms opening strategic public-sector domains to private capital.

Data

Hard figures to substantiate: nuclear capacity 8.8 GW now, target 100 GW by 2047; SMR allocation nearly ₹20,000 crore; LIGO-India provision ₹2,600 crore; TRUST Initiative launched 13 February 2025.

Position

The government's stated stance — that admitting private and foreign participation, alongside SMRs and bilateral technology partnerships, is the route to a more-than-tenfold nuclear scale-up under Viksit Bharat 2047 — supplies the official position on energy-mix reform.

Exemplify

Use the Kovvada AP1000 and CNEWG/Fermilab cooperation as concrete examples of converting the 2008 civil nuclear agreement into project-level outcomes, and SMRs as an example of next-generation indigenisation plus technology import.

Problematise

The reform itself implies the gap it fixes — the supplier-liability chill of the 2010 Act and the statutory bar of the 1962 Act that kept investment and foreign vendors out; the unfinished implementation framework is itself a live constraint.

Way forward

Finalising the Act's implementation rules, a calibrated liability regime, robust independent safety regulation (AERB), and trusted-partner supply chains under TRUST point toward a credible path for the 100 GW goal.

Deploys into: energy security and clean-energy transition (GS3 — infrastructure/energy); science, technology and indigenisation including space/nuclear S&T (GS3.13); and India–United States bilateral and technology partnerships (GS2.18 — global groupings and bilateral cooperation).

Ministry of Science & Technology · 2026-05-18 · PRID 2262315 · PIB source ↗