How does nuclear energy fit into India’s plan to relieve electricity generation of carbon emissions?

Today’s tiny share is explainable. Nuclear plants have a notoriously long gestation period before they can supply power. They often face resistance on the basis of safety concerns, with accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima embedded in public memory.

And India’s indigenous technology has made little progress, with the second of our three-stage programme yet to fructify before it can transition to the use of thorium, which is easier to find in the country than the right kind of uranium.

Interest in nuclear power has seen a global revival for the role it could play in climate action. Plants that house nuclear reactors produce carbon-free electricity around the clock, unlike solar and wind projects that are subject to the vagaries of weather.

A reactor design rethink spurred by the power-guzzling needs of AI—aided by investments from Big Tech firms to meet their climate goals—has resulted in the development of small modular reactors (SMRs), which claim to overcome the legacy drawbacks of nuclear plants.

Big reactors, despite their limitations, are also back in vogue for the same reason. Even though India’s 2047 target represents a modest share of total power capacity, the volume of electricity would be significant; our per capita consumption is currently half the world average and we aspire to be a developed nation by then.

This larger goal demands that electricity tariffs remain low enough for our industry to compete globally. This requires us to get the power sector’s cost calculus right.

While nuclear energy offers large volumes of reliable green supply, given the pace at which battery storage costs are dropping, solar panels and wind turbines backed by batteries are likely to be more cost competitive.

Fiscal incentives could help nuclear power get more competitive, provided we also develop the ‘muscle memory’ of project rollouts that can compress both construction costs and timelines as we go along to enable lower tariffs.

Solar tariffs, for example, have fallen sharply over the last decade-and-a-half, thanks to the large-scale production of key parts in China. Unlike wind and power, reactors use nuclear fuel and thus have variable costs beyond the money invested in setting up plants, but they take up significantly less land that could otherwise be used for food cultivation. On the other hand, the safe storage of spent fuel can be costly too.

All these factors will have to be taken into account.

Broadly, the government needs to undertake resource-adequacy mapping across sectors for the deployment of an optimal energy policy. Trade-offs must be borne in mind. For example, our green ambitions should not be at the expense of the economy. We need to count on efficiency gains, carbon markets and climate finance from the rich world.

The Centre must also develop the institutional capacity needed to oversee and manage the growth of nuclear energy. Globally, SMRs have over 80 designs, but just about four plants have been set up so far, and that too, only recently. All considered, we can’t expect to go into nuclear overdrive.