Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has firmly reiterated the government’s decision to open the nuclear sector to private participation, calling on Indian industry to step forward and meet the country’s development needs. The message is unambiguous: the government has done its part by unlocking a space that had remained closed for decades. Now it is up to the private sector to act.
The backdrop is the Viksit Bharat plan — an ambitious modernisation programme aimed at transforming India into a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of its independence. Among its stated goals is the development of at least 100 GW of nuclear capacity by that date, seen as essential to moving away from coal. India currently operates around 6.9 GW of nuclear power, with a further 5.4 GW under construction. The gap to be bridged is enormous.
The liberalisation process is relatively recent, but has already yielded concrete results. In the 2025-26 Union Budget, presented on 1 February, Sitharaman announced the Nuclear Energy Mission, backed by ₹20,000 crore — approximately $2.1 billion — to develop at least five Indian-designed small modular reactors, the so-called Bharat SMRs, with a target of bringing them online by 2033. The same budget included amendments to the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, the two main legal barriers that had long kept private players out of the sector. In December 2025, the lower house of parliament passed the SHANTI Bill — Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India — which lays the groundwork for allowing Indian private companies and foreign joint ventures to apply for licences to build and operate nuclear power plants.
Industry response has been swift. Following the February announcement, major conglomerates including Jindal Nuclear Power, Tata Power, and Vedanta expressed interest. The space sector, which was opened to private players a few years earlier, has served as a template: that liberalisation generated a productive ecosystem that the government now cites as a model to replicate in nuclear energy. The key difference is that nuclear requires deeper regulatory reform and a more precisely defined civil liability framework — aspects that still need to be fully worked out.
Opening the sector to private investors fundamentally reshapes its structure. Until now, only the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) could build and operate commercial nuclear plants in the country. The regulatory framework taking shape would also allow private companies to access the uranium supply chain — including mining, imports, and processing — previously reserved for state entities. If the legislative process runs its course, India could draw on private capital to help finance a significant share of the 18 new reactors that NPCIL plans to add to the national energy mix by 2031-32, bringing total installed capacity to 22 GW. The political signal is clear, and the industry has taken note. The real question is how quickly the regulatory framework will translate into construction breaking ground.
