The safety imperative: Regulatory capture in the nuclear energy sector could lead the country to grief

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Nearly two decades ago, India promised itself—and the US—that nuclear power would be its next big bet. The two countries signed a landmark deal on civilian nuclear energy in 2008, amid protests from politicians and activists alike.

The late Manmohan Singh, then prime minister, bet his government’s very survival on passing that piece of legislation—a wager he won, contributing to its re-election a year later. But all that political capital was wasted in the years that followed. Investment didn’t flow in.

No new plants that used world-class technology or private-sector expertise got built. That might finally be about to change. In December, India’s Parliament passed a new bill that is supposed to make it easier for private companies, including foreign ones, to build and operate nuclear power plants.

It ends a de-facto state monopoly on this source of energy—and, even more importantly, aligns India’s legal framework with global norms, so investors know what they’re getting into. Hopefully, this hasn’t come too late for power-hungry India. Nuclear contributes only about 3% of its electricity.

As renewable energy scales up across the country, many worry that its intermittent nature will keep dirty coal plants in business longer than necessary. But New Delhi has finally accepted that the base load power demand of the future will need supplementary capacity and nuclear plants are one way to go about it. These ambitions are small compared to India’s size—but vast by any other standards.