SHANTI: Balancing India’s Nuclear ‘Scale Switch’ and Safety Oversight

The government has announced a Nuclear Energy Mission targeting 100 GW of installed nuclear capacity by 2047—roughly a tenfold scale-up. The same official roadmap says NPCIL (the state operator that has historically owned and operated India’s fleet) is expected to contribute 54 GW of this 100 GW, using a mix of indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) and Light Water Reactors with foreign cooperation; India’s nuclear R&D ecosystem (via BARC) is also working on indigenous small modular reactor designs such as BSMR-200 and SMR-55.

The “why” is simple: nuclear plants are capital-heavy, slow to build, and financially viable only when (i) the regulator’s powers and licensing pathways are clear, and (ii) accident-liability risk is structured in a way lenders, insurers, and technology partners can price.

The three practical shifts SHANTI is making

1) Opening civil nuclear power to private participation — while keeping licensing and oversight

The most visible policy break is that India is moving away from a near-complete state-dominated model (with NPCIL at the centre) and creating space for domestic private firms to enter nuclear power. Foreign participation is also envisaged, but through partnerships with Indian firms and subject to licensing and regulatory oversight.

2) Reworking liability — by explaining “operator” vs “supplier” in plain terms

This is the heart of the controversy, and it needs translation.

• The Operator is the entity that runs the nuclear plant day-to-day and is the primary addressee of licensing and safety compliance. In India’s existing system, that operator has essentially been NPCIL. Under an “opened” sector, operators would still be Indian licensees (state-run or private domestic firms), because the operating licence is issued within India’s regulatory system. (Reuters)
• The Supplier is typically the company that supplies key reactor components, engineering, or technology—often a large reactor vendor / original equipment manufacturer (OEM). In many cross-border nuclear projects globally, the technology vendor may be foreign, while the licensed operator is domestic.

Under India’s 2010 CLNDA, legal liability for a nuclear incident is primarily channelled to the operator on a no-fault basis (meaning victims do not have to prove fault), and the operator must maintain financial security to cover its maximum liability.

However, India’s framework became internationally contentious because it provided the operator a statutory “right of recourse” against suppliers in certain circumstances (commonly debated around Section 17), which foreign reactor vendors and their insurers have long viewed as an uncertainty that makes projects harder to finance and contract. Importantly, in this design, the victim’s primary claim is against the operator/claims mechanism—not directly against a foreign Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM); the foreign OEM risk arises through potential recourse and contract structure after the operator pays.

SHANTI is presented as a shift toward an operator-centric liability structure that is easier to insure and finance at scale: PRS’s legislative tracker notes that the Bill keeps the operator-liability model but moves to a tiered operator-liability structure ranging from ₹100 crore to ₹3,000 crore, depending on plant capacity, with operators required to maintain insurance and the central government bearing excess liability beyond the operator’s capped amount.

For a reader, the key policy consequence is this: as India tries to attract new builds and new partnerships, it is signalling that primary compensation responsibility sits with the licensed operator (typically Indian), and the system will be backed by insurable caps and government backstop—rather than a framework perceived as exposing technology suppliers to unpredictable downstream risk.

3) Statutory clarity for the regulator — why it matters to ordinary people

India has had a nuclear safety regulator (the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board — AERB) for decades. The institutional reform here is about making the regulator’s status, powers and role explicitly anchored in the new statute, rather than operating primarily through executive structuring. For non-specialists, the practical meaning is: when you expand from a small, state-run fleet to a larger ecosystem with multiple operators and complex partnerships, public trust depends on a regulator whose authority and processes are clearly defined in law, not just in internal rules.

The debate: what supporters say and what critics fear

Supporters’ argument is that India needs firm, non-fossil electricity that can complement renewables, and that a tenfold nuclear target requires (i) more capital and execution capacity than the state alone can deploy quickly, and (ii) a liability/insurance design that is predictable enough for financing and for attracting advanced technologies, including small modular reactors.

Critics’ argument is that nuclear risk is uniquely high and long-tailed: expanding private participation raises worries about accountability, and any move perceived as “softening” liability or remedies can reduce incentives to invest in safety and can make it harder for affected communities to secure meaningful redress after an incident—especially if oversight capacity does not scale as fast as construction ambition.

In short: SHANTI is the legal “scale switch” for India’s nuclear mission—but its legitimacy will be judged on whether the new architecture can unlock projects without weakening public confidence in safety oversight and compensation credibility as the sector expands.