India’s New Nuclear Era: What the SHANTI Bill 2025 Really Means for the Future of Energy Published By Anupam Nath The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025 marks the biggest reset of India’s nuclear power framework since independence. It replaces the earlier, fragmented legal architecture and creates a single, modern law to govern nuclear development, safety, regulation, and liability. The Bill is central to India’s plan to scale nuclear power capacity to around 100 GW by 2047 as part of a broader clean energy transition and long‑term energy security goals. At its core, SHANTI opens India’s civil nuclear sector—so far dominated by state entities like NPCIL—to limited private participation under strict government and regulatory oversight. Private companies and joint ventures will now be eligible for licences to build, own, operate and decommission nuclear plants, as well as handle parts of the nuclear fuel cycle such as fabrication, transport and storage of fuel, though sensitive strategic activities like enrichment, reprocessing and overall fuel‑cycle control remain with the Union government.A major institutional change is that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), which earlier functioned mainly through executive notifications, will now receive clear statutory status. This strengthens its mandate to set binding safety standards, inspect and monitor facilities, enforce compliance, and, where required, suspend or shut down operations that pose risks. The Bill embeds safety and radiation protection across the entire lifecycle of nuclear activities—from siting and construction to operation, waste management, decommissioning and transport—so that prevention, not just post‑accident compensation, becomes the central principle of India’s nuclear governance. On the economic side, SHANTI aims to make nuclear power more “investable” infrastructure. It rationalises the civil liability framework by capping operator liability in a graded manner and removing the controversial statutory right of recourse against equipment suppliers that had earlier discouraged both global vendors and private investors. While critics argue this could dilute accountability in case of an accident, the government maintains that victim compensation remains protected through a multi‑layered mechanism, including a Nuclear Liability Fund and central government backstop, and that criminal negligence provisions will still apply. Strategically, the Bill is designed to support India’s Nuclear Energy Mission, which targets an expansion from under 9 GW of installed capacity today to about 100 GW by 2047—a more than tenfold increase requiring sustained annual additions of several gigawatts of new capacity. This scale‑up is expected to rely on a mix of large reactors, indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors, international collaborations, and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs) to provide reliable, low‑carbon baseload power that complements solar and wind and advances India’s net‑zero ambitions. At the same time, SHANTI has sparked intense debate. Supporters see it as a pragmatic, future‑oriented reform that could unlock private capital, accelerate project execution, and position India as a serious nuclear power leader in the global clean energy race. Critics, however, warn about capped liabilities, centralisation of power, and the risk that profits may be privatised while long‑term environmental and social risks remain with the state and affected communities. How these tensions are managed—in regulation, project siting, public consultation and transparency—will ultimately determine whether the SHANTI framework delivers a genuinely safe, equitable and sustainable nuclear expansion for India.
