Budget 2025 | India follows the world in its nuclear energy drive

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has committed to developing at least 100 GW of nuclear energy by 2047. In her Union budget for 2025-26, she also proposed setting up a Nuclear Energy Mission with an outlay of ₹20,000 crore.

The mission will focus on research and development of small modular reactors (SMRs), with an aim to have at least five homegrown SMRs running by 2033. Small modular reactors are small nuclear fission reactors that can be manufactured in factories and then installed elsewhere, and are typically of a smaller capacity than conventional nuclear reactors. Currently, nuclear plants account for 1.8% of India’s installed power capacity of 462 gigawatt (GW).

Much of the policy focus in recent years has been on renewable energy, which has grown due to tax and other incentives. Nuclear power generation in India took off after the mid-1970s. The next phase of growth came with the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008.

This led to the US relaxing its nuclear fuel and technology sanctions against India in exchange for Indian civilian reactors being placed under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. Globally, nuclear energy fell out of favour after the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011. However, according to a January 2025 report by the International Energy Agency, there has been a renewed interest in building new nuclear plants and extending the lifetimes of existing ones.

“2025 is set to see generation from nuclear plants reaching an all-time high. This is being driven by energy security concerns, a strengthening of policy support, technological advances, and growing needs for dispatchable low-emissions power," the report said. These are the