You have to hand it to the Modi government. Some of the abbreviations they choose for its critical projects and schemes are quite interesting and peculiar in their own way. Here is the new one – SHANTI, which means peace. The abbreviation stands for Sustainable Harnessing & Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India. The bill, which recently received parliamentary nod, has been set afoot to broaden the scope of harnessing the nuclear sector, primarily for energy security. Allowing private participation in the sector, of course, lies at the fulcrum of this initiative.
According to a formal government note, the bill would consolidate and modernise India’s nuclear legal framework. It would strengthen statutory regulation by granting recognition to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). It would enable limited private participation in the nuclear sector under regulatory oversight. And, in terms of outcome, it intends to support India’s clean-energy transition drive and help in achieving 100 GW nuclear energy capacity by 2047. Nuclear power accounts for about 3 per cent of the total electricity generation today, with the present installed capacity being 8.78 GW.
India’s nuclear power journey has been based on a series of policy and legislative interventions, ever since the country became independent. The Atomic Energy Act 1962 had replaced the earlier law of 1948 and is believed to have laid down the foundation for India’s nuclear programme. It empowered the government to regulate atomic energy for peaceful purposes and ensure strict control over research, development and use of nuclear materials. And, then, there were amendments in 1986, 1987 and 2015 in the Atomic Energy Act of 1962, which saw a slight opening of the door by way of allowing government companies and joint ventures to participate in nuclear power generation. And then Manmohan Singh passed, under extreme opposition, the Civil Liability Nuclear Damage Act 2010, but neither domestic nor foreign players came forward as the law cast an open-ended, unlimited liability on the suppliers of nuclear equipment. Early this year, in the Union budget, the government had announced a dedicated Nuclear Energy Mission, provisioning an allocation of Rs20,000 crore to develop and deploy small modular reactors (SMRs). The new bill could be seen as a step to further that mission programme, with the critical differentiation of allowing the private sector to become a bigger stakeholder than ever before.
In specific terms, the bill would primarily allow private companies to undertake plant operations, power generation and equipment manufacturing. They can also indulge in selected activities like the fabrication of nuclear fuel. But, for all activities that may involve radiation exposure, obtaining prior safety authorisation from the regulatory authority has been made mandatory. The government has made it clear that under the bill, certain sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle activities are reserved exclusively for the Central government or its wholly-owned institutions. These would include sensitive processes like enrichment or isotopic separation of prescribed or radioactive substances, management of spent fuel by way of reprocessing or recycling, production and upgradation of heavy water, etc. The bill has put in place a layered structure for granting, suspending or even cancelling licences and safety authorisations for nuclear energy production. It has also created a framework for the use of nuclear technology in some other selective areas like health care, agriculture, industry and research. The bill clearly marks the end of the monopoly of government enterprise Nuclear Power Corporation Limited (NPCL) in the plant operations.
No doubt, the move has come under fire from several quarters that strongly believe that harnessing nuclear technology for power generation is a sensitive process and should be exclusively carried out by the government agencies. But when they say that, they are probably resisting the process of mainstreaming nuclear power as part of the long-term energy security programmes, which are underway in many countries in the world. Two of the leading economies – US and China (targeting to produce 500 GW from nuclear sources alone by 2050) – allow private participation (in varying forms) in their nuclear programme and nobody is complaining.
It is no secret that our limited experience with the ‘only for the public sector’ approach has not delivered the desired results. And considering India’s long-term energy security plans, it is time to press the pedal to make the most of the nuclear energy options that we have. To achieve the 100 GW target, we will need an investment of Rs15 lakh crore, and our mission budget is only Rs20,000 crore. Needless to say, this would entail heavy investment from the private sector and opening the doors for them is critical.