India's Big Nuclear Plans Could Be Slowed by New Rules on Foreign Reactors

India wants to build a lot more nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, but a new draft set of rules could make that harder. Experts say the rules would put extra hurdles in the way of foreign companies that want to bring their reactor technology to India. This could slow down the flow of money and new ideas that India needs to reach its clean energy goals.

India passed a new nuclear law last year that opened its nuclear energy sector to private companies for the first time. Before that, only the government could build and run nuclear plants. The goal of the new law was to bring in foreign technology and large amounts of investment to grow the country's nuclear power.

India wants to increase its nuclear power capacity from where it is today to 100 gigawatts by the mid-2040s. That is nearly ten times more than the country currently produces. To get there, the nuclear industry says India will need about $210 billion in investment. Nuclear power is seen as a key way for India to use less coal, which still provides most of the country's electricity.

Big Indian companies like Tata Power, Adani Power, and Reliance Industries have been in talks with the government about building nuclear plants. Foreign companies from Russia, France, and the United States have also been in discussions. However, many of these companies say they are waiting to see the final rules before they commit to spending money.

The draft rules say that any company wanting to use a foreign reactor design in India must first get special approvals from the country where the reactor was built. Then the company must get a separate design approval from India's own nuclear safety regulator. Critics say this two-step process could take a very long time and discourage companies from choosing foreign technology.

One expert, lawyer Suhaan Mukerji, said the draft rules could be especially harmful for a newer type of reactor called a small modular reactor, or SMR. SMRs are smaller and cheaper to build than traditional reactors, which makes them easier to deploy. But most SMR designs are still very new and have not been widely used yet, which could make them ineligible under the proposed rules.

A senior government official said the draft rules were written with safety as the top priority and that they follow international standards. But industry leaders disagree, saying that the rules fit older, more established nuclear markets and could cause India to miss out on the newest technologies available.

The draft rules also do not answer some very important business questions. For example, they do not explain how much money investors can expect to earn, or what the minimum qualifications are for companies that want to operate plants. Experts say that without this information, it is very difficult for companies to decide whether a nuclear project is worth investing in.

Over the past eight months, Indian and foreign companies met with government officials more than a dozen times to ask for clearer answers on these topics. Earlier versions of the rules, shared inside the government, had more details about pricing and investor returns. But those details were removed from the version that was made public, which has raised more concerns.

Companies have until September 4 to give feedback on the draft rules. After that, the government says it will take about three months to finalize the rules. Until then, many companies say they are holding back their investment decisions, which could delay the start of new nuclear projects across India.