Indias Nuclear Power Push Can India Really Reach 100 Gw By 2047

TITLE: India’s nuclear power push: Can India really reach 100 GW by 2047? | Green Shift | M Ramesh CHANNEL: The Hindu businessline DATE: 2026-06-03 ---TRANSCRIPT--- [music]

Hello and welcome to the next episode of Green Shift. In April this year, the Central Electricity Authority conducted a workshop to explain the salient features of the Shanti Act. This act enacted recently opened up the nuclear energy sector to private company. The workshops are participation from big names such as Nuclear Power Corporation of India, NTPC, and from the private sector, L&T, Westinghouse, and Tata Power. Several points came up for discussion during the workshop, and to discuss these with us today, we have Mr. M. Ramesh, senior editorial consultant with Business Line. Hello Ramesh, welcome. And happy that you could make it again at very short notice. Delighted. Happy again to be here. Ramesh, in the context of this workshop, what are the biggest takeaways from your point of view? Well, Bharat, to my mind, the biggest takeaway is a big doubt over whether a large-scale adoption of nuclear power in India will happen at all or not. But why are you saying this? You see, Bharat, basically because we now learn from the minutes of the workshop that nuclear power is extremely expensive. Earlier, we knew that, you know, the nuclear tariffs were something like 3 rupees, 3 and 1/2 rupees, or so. But they were vintage plants. Now it transpires, and they have said so in the minutes of the meeting, that a new, you know, the pressurized heavy water reactor that we are building will cost, that is, electricity from the PHWR will cost something like 7 rupees 77 paise. And if it’s a light water reactor, it will cost something like 7 rupees 88 paise. And these tariffs are at today’s costs. They’re also saying that every year the cost will go up by 10 paise because of increase in O&M costs. Now, look at this. Typically, a power project a nuclear power project will take about 12 to 13 years to build. That has been our experience. That means you have to add 1 rupee 20 paisa to 1 rupee 30 paisa to the normative indicative tariffs that they have mentioned there. Which means that nuclear power will be something like 9 rupees. Now, who will be in a position to buy this power? Nuclear power is simply pricing itself out of the market. That’s my biggest fear. That’s my biggest takeaway from this workshop. Oh, then what do you think is the government’s rational in its push to nuclear power? You see, I don’t know. I can only guess this much. Nuclear power costs I mean, the tariffs are generally stable. They don’t rise much because, you know, it’s mostly the capital costs. The variable cost The running costs are not much, anyway. So, probably the government thinks that over a long period of time that is, you know, you must also know and understand that a nuclear power plant has a life of about 60 to 100 years. It can live that long. So, the government must be thinking that in several decades due to inflation and so on, the tariffs in the economy electricity tariffs in the economy would have gone up, whereas nuclear tariffs would not have gone up that much. So, there will be some kind of balancing. It will become affordable or, you know, not very costlier than other source of electricity at that stage. That is probably the reasoning. But, even if that is true, the question is who will be willing to buy power at these rates in the initial stages, maybe for the first decade or so. That’s a very big question mark. I can only think of this as an answer. Maybe somebody like NTPC will be able to pull it off because NTPC has many thermal power projects and is also getting very big in renewable energy. Maybe NTPC will be able to bundle the high nuclear power with the cheaper thermal or renewable energy and then sell it to the discount at an average price. Sorry to interrupt, but when it bundles, the average cost will go up, right? Why would they bundle? It It will go up, but it will not be like 9 rupees. Because you are mixing it with cheaper power, the average will of course be higher than otherwise, but it will still not be, you know, they won’t have to sell nuclear power at 9 rupees. That can be the only rationale. And one would do this in the time that we have to give ourselves till we can go completely renewable or new energy like solar. No, right. I don’t think they are looking at renewable versus nuclear. The renewable also will rise much faster than nuclear. So, thermal also, you know, the plan is to build about 80 gigawatts of thermal power plant between now and 2030. So, there will be thermal, there will be a lot more renewable energy, there will be some nuclear. Maybe the idea is to bundle all these things and sell it at an average price, which might be somewhat affordable to discoms. That mean can be the only rationale behind this. Because otherwise, uh I’m at a loss to understand which discom or which consumer will be in a position to buy power or will be willing to buy nuclear power at 9 rupees or 10 rupees when there are cheaper alternatives available. Today you are able to get renewable energy, a steady stream of renewable energy, what they call FDRE, firm dispatchable renewable energy, at something like 4 4 and 1/2 rupees. Now, if you are a company that wants to go green, uh you have that option, a much cheaper option, which costs probably half as much as nuclear energy. Who would want to buy nuclear energy at 9 rupees 10 rupees? I am at a loss to understand. The government has not supplied any information on this point. These tariffs, by the way, are the indicative tariffs that has been mentioned in the in the minutes to that meeting. So, these are government’s numbers, anyway. What is the future of nuclear energy in India? In other contexts, we would think that as scale grows, your costs would come down. Would that apply here? You see, we we If your question is whether it is worthwhile doing nuclear at all, because, as I just said, the costs are too high. We must find some way of going ahead with nuclear energy. Only because only if we go through this cycle, we’ll get to a stage where we can use the thorium that is available in the country with us. When we get to thorium cycle, it might take a good 40 years, 50 years also, maybe even 100 years. Doesn’t matter, because once we get to the thorium cycle, thorium alone can energize the entire country for hundreds of years or even millennia. But to get there, you have to have a fleet of nuclear power plants running so that they generate enough plutonium uh with which you can get into the thorium cycle. The science behind the thorium cycle is very interesting, but uh I’m sure we will have a separate video of that on another day. But coming back to today’s topic of discussion, the workshop and the discussions, the salient points thereof, uh what can be reasonably expected in the near future in terms of developments? I think uh what is very likely to happen, you know, with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India is on to building 10 700 MW pressurized heavy water reactors. Uh work is on. Couple of reactors have come up. I think that will go on. So, you will add 7,000 MW and uh Kudankulam, that is NPCIL’s again, in collaboration with uh Rosatom of Russia. Kudankulam 1 and 2 are up and running. Kudankulam 3 and 4 are about to be, you know, will be completed pretty soon. And five and six will come. So, that will be 4,000 more. Uh NTPC is probably likely to do something because they have said they will build 30 gigawatts or 30,000 megawatts of nuclear power. At least some of them will come. So, all put together, you may have uh alone NPCL in collaboration with Rosatom and NP NTPC. Uh these plants are likely to come up anyway. What it means is that it will be left to the government or government companies to do the heavy lifting. I don’t see the private sector getting excited about it. And by the way, this is not just my reading of the situation. Even NTPC’s chairman and managing director, Mr. Gurdeep Singh, said as much in the workshop. And I quote here from the minutes. He noted with concern that the anticipated excitement from the private sector has yet to fully materialize. So, there you are. This is what is likely to happen. We’ll probably add 7,000 or 4,000, maybe 15 15 gigawatts or 20 gigawatts. This much will come up, which is still a respectable number, but I am not convinced that the government will be anywhere near its target of meeting 100 gigawatts by 2047. That looks to me to be a very tall order. Unless a miracle happens, you know, some breakthrough happens, technological breakthrough, whatever happens, it’s highly unlikely that will it will happen. To go into a bit of granular detail, one of the points that struck my eye is uh you know, from the workshop, is the relaxing of norms for boundaries around the nuclear plants. And we I I remember there was a discussion about 1 km to 700 m to 500 m. Does it matter at all? Well, uh you see there are two kinds of things that can go wrong in a nuclear power plant. One is a large mishap of the Chernobyl Fukushima kind, which is very very rare. Extremely rare and with the learnings from the past mistakes, I don’t think I I think the plant operators will be able to de-risk that part of it. But if it if that does happen, it does not at all matter whether a person is standing at the 1,001st meter or at 701st meter. It’s all the same. It’s going to blow them off anyway, both of them. From that perspective, does not matter. But radiation leaks keep happening from time to time. You can’t completely avoid that. It is a risk for people who work in the neighborhood of the plant. There it matters. Even a distance of about 300 m can make a difference. The government has said that it is thinking of shrinking the exclusion zone around a nuclear power plant from 1 km, 1,000 m, to 700 m for some projects to 500 m for some other projects. I don’t think this is a wise idea because [snorts] the government may have technical reasons to believe that this is enough. The government may after all can can come around and tell you, “Don’t we have nuclear submarines? Aren’t there nuclear-powered aircraft carriers? You know, it’s right next to people. What can happen?” That’s one part of the argument. But look at the psychological impact on the society. You need public trust. You need public buy-in into nuclear power plants. Even if a small leak happens some somewhere and a few people are affected, perhaps not even fatally, but they are affected. Imagine the kind of negative publicity it will generate, and it could derail the whole program. There is really no need for the for gaining a little bit of land here and there to shrink the exclusion zone around nuclear power plants and leave it open for criticism. It’s not a good idea. I hope the government does not take a final decision on this. As it is, people generally tend to be scared when discussing these issues. So, I see what you’re saying. Any other points from the workshop that seemed important to you? One is that the we learned that the Atomic Energy Commission has recommended to the government that foreign direct investment in the Indian nuclear power sector can be allowed, should be allowed. They have not indicated the level of investments allowed. It could be 26%, 39, 51, 74. It could be any number. That’s under consideration with an inter-ministerial panel or something. So, the the government is looking at it. So, pretty sure I’m pretty sure that FDI will be allowed into the sector. Then, we’ll have to see how things pan out because Rosatom, for example, which is already in India, in a which already deep in India, might want some stake in the plants. They have not said anything, by the way. They have not said anything, but one can presume that people companies like Rosatom will be interested in picking up stakes. So, that can change finance dynamics a little bit. So, that is one takeaway from this. The other one is a very interesting proposal by the government. The government wants to build a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel. They have indicated some number, 20% of what the plant require over its time or something like that. Uh they want to build a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel. I think it will be uranium. Just as we have strategic reserves of petroleum. This is to give confidence to plant operators or investors that uh don’t worry, some geopolitical issue happens, you will not be immediately starved of nuclear fuel. That’s quite an interesting proposal. One of the point that has been thrown up this workshop is this is somewhat negative again. The amount of water that a nuclear power plant will require. They have given a number of 80 million liters uh for a twin 700 MW site. Now, I did some calculations with a little bit of help from ChatGPT. And I learned that this is twice as much as a typical uh supercritical thermal power plant of a comparable size, you know, super supercritical thermal power plants come in either 660 MW or 800 MW in size. So, if you take a 660 MW supercritical coal-fired power plant, uh it will take about 3 to 4 L of water per kilowatt-hour or unit of electricity it produces. A nuclear power plant, we see from calculations, will take twice as much. Now, this is going to be a problem, obviously, because you have to locate nuclear power plants where uh there is some source of water, and typically where there is a source of water, there is also population habitation. So, how the government is going to tackle this part, how plant operators are going to look at this is another question. And talking of where these nuclear power plants will be located, the government has also said that it is studying some sites, potential sites, where Uh and by the way, they have said that they will complete this study and put it all up on a dashboard along with the level of further pre-feasibility studies that one would need to make for that particular for each site. So, the government will come up with a list of potential sites where these plants can be located, and uh have also said uh that most of these sites will be um the site of a retired scrapped thermal thermal power plants. Where you have all the attendant infrastructure. And it makes sense. That is what will happen. So, we’ll have to wait for that development again. And we’ll have to see with all these things what level of interest the private sector shows. I’m not very confident there will be a great level of interest, but fingers crossed. Let’s wait and see what happens. Ramesh, we’ve actually dwelt quite at length on SMRs or small modular reactors in our columns. I’m wondering if the workshop came up with a reference to Oh, yes. Yes, they did. I think there was a whole session on small modular reactors, SMRs. Uh worldwide uh SMRs are uh not a large fleet of SMRs not that a large fleet of SMRs are being set up, but SMRs have generated a lot of interest. Now, I can tell you some a little bit from my personal experience. A couple of years back, I was in this Russian city of Sochi, where the Russians were holding a uh a conference on uh nuclear energy. Now, there were parallel sessions. Uh there was one session on SMRs. Believe me, Bharat, I couldn’t get into that room. It was so full of people. Forget about finding a place for me to sit or even to stand. I couldn’t even get in. Awesome. That’s the level of interest. That’s the level of interest. Whereas the other sessions hardly saw any attendance at all. Everybody wanted to be in this session. This was a couple of years back and since then the interest in SMRs has only grown, has only gone up. Now, so appropriately this workshop discusses SMRs and they are looking at a few interesting things here that give some idea about broadly the government’s thinking on SMRs. Again, I can do no better than to read out from the minutes. It was said that the specific design requirements articulated for India suitable SMRs include road or rail transportability, a groundbreaking to grid timeline not exceeding 36 months, minimal site preparation, dry cooling options for water scarce locations, compatibility with thorium-based fuel cycles. This is very important. And citing flexibility to enable deployment closer to load centers. So, that gives us some idea about the broad thinking in the government about SMRs. Again, there again SMRs are even costlier than god. large-scale power plants. Uh how it is going to pan out, we don’t know. Uh the Another attendant point here is we have India, by the way, is is an expert in SMRs. You know, we have a fleet of 220 MW PHWRs, pressurized heavy water reactors. Those are not modular, for sure, but those can be quickly converted to some kind of modularity. Awesome, Ramesh. Several points that came up and you offered a lot of clarity on those. Would you like to sum up for the sake of our viewers as to what this workshop was Yes. Basically, what we learned from the workshop is we have to brace for high-cost nuclear power. And we also have to understand that we cannot get too hyped up about this. Nuclear power expansion will happen in India, but certainly not at the pace that the government uh thinks it will. Let’s be realistic. There will be some deployments, as I said. Uh the government companies will be left to do the heavy lifting. NPCIL, NTPC, uh and NHPCIL along with uh some foreign companies, Rosatom, and so on. Some deployment will happen. So, we can modestly think of about 20 gigawatts or so. Nowhere near 100 gigawatts. So, on that somber note, we will wind up this episode, but I’m sure we’ll have a lot more interesting things on new and renewable energy to give to our viewers. Thank you, Ramesh, for coming on. We appreciate having you. So, viewers, thank you very much. We hope you found it as illuminating as I did. And we’ll be back with you sometime soon.