Overview
- The government introduced the SHANTI Bill in the Lok Sabha, seeking to allow licensed private companies and joint ventures to build, own, operate or decommission nuclear power plants.
- The draft confines accident liability to plant operators with a per‑incident cap of 300 million Special Drawing Rights, spares equipment suppliers from liability, and limits operators’ recourse to cases expressly set in contracts or intentional wrongdoing.
- Activities such as enrichment, reprocessing, high‑level waste management and heavy water production would remain government‑exclusive, with source and fissile materials kept under central surveillance and spent fuel delivered to the government.
- The Centre would set nuclear tariffs overriding the Electricity Act, gain powers to suspend or cancel licences and assume control of assets in specified cases, and confer statutory status on the nuclear regulator with new claims and dispute mechanisms.
- Parliamentary scrutiny and possible amendments lie ahead, while market analysis flags weak near‑term economics for nuclear power compared with coal and battery‑storage‑linked power even as the reform targets about 100 GW capacity by 2047.