The Centre plans to expand the private sector’s role in India’s nuclear capacity expansion through partnerships to set up small modular nuclear reactors and research on nuclear energy technologies, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

Sitharaman, in her 2024-25 budget speech, said the Narendra Modi government would partner with the private sector to set up Bharat small reactors and for research and development on new technologies for nuclear energy.

“Nuclear energy is expected to form a very significant part of the energy mix for Viksit Bharat (developed India),” Sitharaman said, outlining the planned initiatives on small modular reactors which nuclear energy experts believe could help rapidly ramp up the country’s nuclear energy capacity.

Nuclear energy experts have for long pitched the lower capital costs and modular construction of small reactors as key advantages over conventional large nuclear reactors.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is designing the 220MW pressurised heavy water reactor to use a small reactor for captive nuclear power generation, the Union minister of state for atomic energy, Jitendra Singh, had said earlier this year. The DAE is also working on a Bharat Small Modular Reactor 220MW, he had said.

India currently has 22 operating nuclear reactors with an installed capacity of 6,780MW, with nuclear energy accounting for about 3 per cent of total electricity generated. But the country plans to expand both renewable and nuclear energy which are expected to dominate India’s energy mix by 2070.

The Nuclear Power Corporation, the government entity that builds and operates nuclear reactors, is building
700MW reactors.