Nuclear oversight: Should India’s ministry of power take charge of nuclear energy? Assign with care

However, its demand is neither alarming nor a brazen sign of turf expansion. Article 77(3) of the Constitution lays down a key function of the President of India: “[The] President shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the Government of India, and for the allocation among Ministers of the said business."

Thus, the responsibility and accountability for all government actions must be assigned to various specified ministries without any overlap. These orders take the form of two lists, one of which outlines the broad subjects, and the other, specific areas within each subject.

If nuclear power is to become a mainstay of India’s base capacity for electricity, not just an ancillary activity geared as much to supply us with electrons as to gain expertise in the field and fuel for our nuclear armoury, then it should join the country’s regular portfolio of power generation.

A source-agnostic power ministry could then manage it in conjunction with thermal, hydroelectric and renewable energy—like solar and wind. As sources, the latter two are intermittent. When the sun does not shine and wind ceases to blow, other supplies must fill the gaps for grid stability.

This calls for battery storage and a mix of gas and hydel sources that can be shut down or restarted with relative ease. Coal-burning plants are hard to switch on and off at short notice.

This is even harder to do with nuclear plants. So, thermal and nuclear plants are well placed to supply baseload electricity, while gas and hydel form a middle layer whose knob can be turned up and down at will, even as renewables fortified with storage systems constitute a third layer on top.

It is for the power ministry to decide how large each layer should be in the context of demand and supply patterns at any given time and place. If nuclear capacity is commissioned by the DAE without reference to an overall view of power demand, supply and their mediated management, that would be inefficient.

It thus makes sense for the ministry of power to decide how many gigawatts of nuclear power are needed within a given timeframe, and where. As a broad subject, nuclear power is best allocated to the power ministry, which could sanction capacity additions and reactor locations.

As for other aspects of oversight, from the monitoring of reactors in operation to the enforcement of safety rules and carrying out of checks, these should stay vested solely in the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB).

Ideally, the AERB should be an independent regulator—one that gets its policy mandate from the power ministry and DAE, but regulates autonomously in accordance with that policy and is held to account by a Parliamentary panel.

Eventually, an ideal scenario would be one in which a new integrated ministry is set up for energy that subsumes hydrocarbons under its ambit, apart from thermal, nuclear and renewable power.

Once we have a grid that integrates traditional sources of power with battery storage, including batteries under the hood of parked vehicles, we would need common oversight. Nuclear safety, of course, would be under the specific charge of specialists.