India’s nuclear power agency clears insurance for reactors

India’s nuclear power agency has cleared a long-delayed insurance policy for all 21 reactors, officials said on Saturday, marking a significant leap in the country’s ambitious plans to become one of the world’s top nuclear power generators.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2016, 09:41:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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India’s nuclear power agency has cleared a long-delayed insurance policy for all 21 reactors, officials said on Saturday, marking a significant leap in the country’s ambitious plans to become one of the world’s top nuclear power generators.

India’s nuclear power agency has cleared a long-delayed insurance policy for all 21 reactors. (Representative image)

Officials said the insurance policy was cleared by the board of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) on Thursday under the India Nuclear Insurance Pool (INIP), set up in June 2015 to address liability issues for both operators and suppliers.

The insurance policy of suppliers was also finalised on April 21 and is likely to be cleared in the next meeting between GIC Re, the lead manager of the Insurance Pool, and industry representatives, they added. India plans to build around 60 nuclear reactors with an aim to produce 63,000 megawatts (MW) of power by 2032, from 5,780 MW at present, as part of a broader push to move away from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

A 2010 law giving the state-run NPCIL the right to seek damages from suppliers in the event of an accident had been putting off suppliers till now.

“We are very happy that all the concerns of suppliers have been addressed by GIC regarding the nuclear insurance pool. We just need clarity on from when the insurance policy would be active and till what period or what is called the start-up of initial licensing period,” a senior official of Godrej and Boyce, a precision supplier, told HT.

India has already deposited its instrument of ratification for the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) with the International Atomic Energy Agency in February this year. The CSC requires signatories to channel liability to the operator and offers access to relief funds.

An official said the Modi government set up a Rs 1,500-crore insurance pool after putting the liability issue on fast track.

Westinghouse Corporation submitted its techno-commercial bid for six nuclear reactors for the 6000 MW Mithi-Virdi power plant in Gujarat in February and an empowered committee will evaluate the bid on April 28 in Mumbai.

The Westinghouse deal is expected to be finalised during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the US this June.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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