India Signs Uranium Pact With Uzbekistan as $5 Billion Trade Target Set
India's long-term uranium supply arrangement with Uzbekistan, announced during Modi's Tashkent visit, adds a second major bilateral source within seven weeks of the Australia deal.
India secured a long-term uranium supply arrangement with Uzbekistan on Saturday (2026-08-29), adding a second major bilateral source for nuclear fuel within seven weeks of signing a similar deal with Australia. The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed the arrangement as part of the outcomes from Prime Minister Modi's Tashkent visit. The two countries simultaneously elevated their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and established a foreign-minister-led Coordination Council.6,5
Bilateral trade between India and Uzbekistan has crossed $1 billion, and both sides are now targeting $5 billion by 2030, with plans to expand market access, banking connectivity and infrastructure investment alongside the uranium arrangements.5,6 The uranium pact is the component most directly relevant to India's energy programme, given the scale of the reactor buildout the government has committed to.
The Uzbekistan deal extends a procurement push that accelerated sharply in July. On Thursday (2026-07-09), India and Australia operationalised a long-pending uranium export agreement at the 3rd India-Australia Annual Summit in Melbourne, ending a delay of more than a decade over nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation concerns.2,1 India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has historically constrained its access to global uranium suppliers.3
India's urgency is grounded in arithmetic. The country operates 24 nuclear reactors at seven sites with combined installed capacity of 8,780 MW, contributing roughly 3% of total electricity generation.2 The government's Nuclear Energy Mission targets 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2047. Reactors under construction are expected to lift that figure to around 22 GW by 2031-32 — a fourfold increase from current installed capacity, and still only a fraction of the 2047 goal.2
An Indian parliamentary committee made the supply concern explicit. The Committee on Public Undertakings published a report on August 7 stressing the urgency of uranium project progress, drawing responses from Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd and the Department of Atomic Energy on the country's reactor buildout schedule.4
Australia and Uzbekistan serve different functions in India's supply strategy. Australia holds an estimated 28% to 33% of the world's identified recoverable uranium reserves and exports its entire production, operating no domestic reactors.2 Uzbekistan is a significant producer in its own right. The two relationships provide geographic and commercial diversification rather than redundant coverage of the same supply market.
The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu achieved first criticality earlier in 2026, marking progress in the second stage of India's three-stage nuclear programme.2 That programme eventually aims to use thorium, which India holds in large domestic volumes. But the first stage — the pressurised heavy-water and light-water reactors currently under construction — depends on imported uranium. The deals signed this year directly address that dependency.2
Uranium ETF pricing has not tracked the bilateral deal momentum. The URA uranium ETF was trading at $45.57, down 5.89%, as of 2026-08-31 early trading. Near-term spot market dynamics drive ETF valuations; the bilateral arrangements being put in place operate on long-term contracted volumes and react to different signals than spot books.
The pace at which the Uzbekistan arrangement moves from announced intent to a binding offtake contract remains open. India's track record on bilateral uranium negotiations argues for caution: administrative arrangements with Australia were first flagged in a joint statement during Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's visit to India in November 2009, and the operative agreement did not arrive until July 2026.3 If talks with Uzbekistan run on a comparable timeline, they provide limited near-term coverage for reactors scheduled to commission before the mid-2030s. The harder number to watch is the gap between 22 GW projected by 2031-32 and the fuel contracts that need to be in place to feed those plants from day one.2