India Releases Draft SHANTI Rules to Open Nuclear Sector to Private Capital
The draft regulations are the first implementing framework for the SHANTI Act, which ended India's decades-long state monopoly on civilian nuclear generation.
India's Department of Atomic Energy has issued draft SHANTI Rules, the implementing regulations that will govern private entry into the country's civilian nuclear sector under the Sustainable Harnessing of Atomic Energy for National Transformation and Industry Act, 2025. The Act ended a decades-long state monopoly on nuclear generation, but private investment cannot move at scale until the rules are finalised.1,4
Investors need rules, not legislation alone. Tata Power CEO Praveer Sinha told Bloomberg Television that the utility plans to build India's first privately owned nuclear plant by 2032, a commitment that depends on a licensing regime still in draft form. Capital projects of that scale require regulatory certainty years before the first concrete is poured.7
India's targets make the execution gap the central risk. The government aims to raise nuclear capacity from 8.78 GW to 100 GW by 2047, an expansion requiring as much as 19.28 trillion rupees — around $200 billion at current exchange rates — in cumulative capital, according to a roadmap commissioned by India's power ministry. An interim target of 22 GW is set for fiscal year 2031-32.6
The URA uranium ETF gained 0.98% as of 2026-08-18, reflecting ongoing investor interest in the sector. India's Department of Atomic Energy signed a uranium supply contract with Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom in 2026, valued at over $4 billion with 92.9% shareholder approval, ranking it among the largest uranium supply arrangements in Asia, Geopolitical Monitor reported.2
The existing nuclear base is small relative to the ambition. NPCIL data show India operates 25 reactors across seven power stations with 8,880 MW installed as of late 2025, and nuclear generation accounted for roughly 3% of the country's electricity output in fiscal year 2024-25, generating approximately 57 TWh. Eight additional reactors totalling 6,600 MW are under construction.2
Cost is the sector's soft underbelly. Existing state-built plants produce electricity at between 2.72 and 3.87 rupees per kilowatt-hour, competitive by Indian utility standards, The Hindu BusinessLine reported. Private developers will not benefit from depreciated state infrastructure, and the draft rules will need to address access to fuel supply, land, and grid connections on comparable terms, or private capital faces a built-in cost disadvantage from the outset.1
Atomic Energy Minister Jitendra Singh said India intends to build five small modular reactors domestically by 2033, part of the effort to add capacity without waiting for permitting timelines associated with gigawatt-scale plants. No domestic Indian SMR design has been commercially deployed, so the cost and schedule assumptions behind that target remain untested.6
State-owned NTPC is projected to supply 30% of new nuclear capacity by 2047, per the power ministry roadmap, leaving private developers and international partners to deliver the remaining 70%. That is a large share for a sector with no private precedent. The Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu, India's largest, with two operational 1,000 MW units and a design capacity of 6,000 MW, was built entirely with Russian technology and government capital.6,2
A parliamentary panel that reviewed the sector in July 2026 flagged new international fuel partnerships as a priority, suggesting supply diversification beyond the Kazatomprom deal remains incomplete, according to The Hindu BusinessLine.5
How the draft rules address supplier liability and licensing will be the first test of whether foreign reactor vendors treat India as a serious market. Economic Times energy reporting noted that the Department of Atomic Energy, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, and related agencies face coordinated demands on licensing and project execution over the next 18 months. Without answers on those fronts, the 70% private and international share of the 100 GW target is aspirational rather than fundable.3