India’s long pursuit of nuclear power
Involvement of the private sector and the focus on self-reliance should help the country achieve target set in the Union budget
The FY26 Union Budget set the ambitious target of achieving 100,000 MW of nuclear power capacity by 2047, emphasising the crucial role of nuclear energy not only in the nation’s industrial imperatives but also in its desire to move away from fossil fuels and achieve net zero emissions by 2070.
India’s electricity demand is growing at a rate of 6-8% annually. While nuclear energy was recognised soon after Independence as a panacea for meeting power needs and achieving developmental goals, the progress here has been erratic and disappointing. A look at the past is instructive.
A week after China’s first nuclear test, on October 16, 1964, Homi J Bhabha, the first chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), spoke on All India Radio. According to an account in American political scientist George Perkovich’s India’s Nuclear Bomb, Bhabha spelt out the advantages of acquiring nuclear weapons and went on to quantify the costs involved. He stated that a 10-kiloton “explosion” would cost $350,000 ( ₹17.5 lakh at the then rate of 5 rupees to the dollar), while the cost of a 2-megaton “explosion” would be ₹30 lakh, and a stockpile of 50 hydrogen bombs could be created for ₹15 crore. Earlier, while in London, Bhabha had declared that India could explode an atom bomb within 18 months of a decision to do so.
In hindsight, it is obvious that Bhabha had erred in both his time and cost estimation of nuclear-weapon capability. But more to the point is the fact that he had cast his mind into the future and advocated exploitation of the country’s nascent scientific potential across the full spectrum of nuclear technology. Apart from advocating nuclear weapons for defence, he was convinced that abundant availability of electric power from nuclear plants would, by itself, trigger India’s rapid economic development.
In 1954, Bhabha mooted his ambitious “three-stage plan” envisioned to generate enough nuclear power to sustain India’s economic development. Adopted in 1958, the plan’s first stage envisaged building of natural uranium (containing U-235) fuelled pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) with Canadian assistance to generate electricity. In this process, U-235 would yield plutonium (Pu-239) as an important byproduct. In the second stage, reactors would be built to run on fuel composed of Pu-239 mixed with thorium, which is available in abundance in the beach sand in Kerala. When irradiated in the second stage reactor, the plutonium-thorium fuel mixture would generate U-233 as a byproduct.
The third stage of the programme was to consist of breeder reactors, which would use a mix of U-233 and thorium as fuel. These reactors are so named because during the fission process they breed more U-233 than they consume and can thus become a source of this element. Given that India has multiple times more thorium than uranium, fast breeder reactors (FBR) appeared to offer a solution for our problems.
Bhabha, optimistically, predicted that the country would have 8,000 MW of nuclear power by 1980. Fired by his excessive optimism, the department of atomic energy (DAE), in subsequent years, went on to dramatically enhance the target to 20,000 MW by 1987, and later to 43,500 MW by 2000. The reality, however, turned out to be somewhat disappointing. The DAE’s actual achievement was 600 MW of nuclear power in 1980, 950 MW in 1987, and 2,720 MW in 2000.
As of now, India has 24 nuclear reactors in operation with 11 more under construction. The current installed nuclear power capacity stands at 8,180 MW with an additional 11,600 MW to be added by 2031-32. This will bring the total installed nuclear capacity to 22,480 MW; still a long way from the 2047 target of 100,000 MW.
As far as thorium FBRs are concerned, for decades, DAE has been struggling with the research and development challenges of evolving cost-effective and reliable technologies related to fuel fabrication, reprocessing, and safe reactor operation. The first prototype FBR at Kalpakkam began fuel loading only in March 2024 and is expected to achieve criticality in late 2025. Of late, the thorium plus high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel cycle route is being suggested by experts as an alternative, or supplement, to India’s long-term FBR strategy. This would involve irradiating thorium along with HALEU in existing PHWRs to generate uranium enriched between 5% and 20%. The other area of perpetual concern has been the paucity of nuclear fuel. Historically, India has faced challenges in meeting uranium fuel requirements for its nuclear power programme due to limited domestic reserves and their inefficient exploitation as well as restrictions on international trade in “yellow cake” uranium concentrate. India’s annual production of natural uranium from the Jaduguda and Bhatin mines is a modest 600 tonne, accounting for a mere 1.22% of the total world production.
Thus, for the nuclear establishment, the 2005 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement came as manna from heaven. Also known as the “123 Agreement”, it not only ended India’s nuclear isolation that was enforced in the aftermath of its first nuclear test in 1974, but also opened the door for the country to engage in nuclear commerce with other countries, and permitted access to uranium supply from other countries. Most importantly, it allowed India to keep eight reactors outside the purview of international “safeguards”, and available for generating fissile material for purposes other than power generation.
So, what went wrong with Bhabha’s dream? He had, obviously, overlooked the absence of infrastructure, industry and markets which were to emerge only two to three decades later. While there have undoubtedly been instances of over-optimism in the declaration of ambitious targets, our talented scientists have faced and overcome a combination of complex technological challenges and constraints such as international sanctions, land acquisition issues, financial limitations, and project management complexities.
Hopefully, the involvement of the private sector and a thrust on atmanirbharta, including rapid advancements in the FBR programme (or alternatives), should see India accelerate its nuclear power capacity growth to meet targets on time.
Arun Prakash is a former chief of naval staff. The views expressed are personal