Strengthening India’s Nuclear Supply Chain | 08 Sep 2025

Source: IE  

Why in News?

India is planning to introduce legal reforms in its civil nuclear sector to allow controlled private and foreign investment, address supplier liability, and align with global norms—focusing on expanding low-carbon nuclear capacity through LWRs and SMRs.

What is the Significance of Nuclear Energy for India?

• Ensuring Reliable Energy Supply: Nuclear power can play a pivotal role in meeting India’s rapidly growing energy demand by providing continuous, 24/7 electricity. 
  • Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and microreactors can deliver clean energy to remote locations without dependence on the conventional grid.
  • Nuclear plants provide a stable power supply even during natural disasters or geopolitical disruptions, offering a reliable alternative when conventional grids are compromised.
• Achieving Net-Zero Goals: Nuclear energy plays a pivotal role in India's strategy to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and meet its net-zero emissions target by 2070. 
• Boosting Industrial Development: Nuclear energy can support high-capacity, energy-intensive sectors such as steel, cement, and data centers that require stable power. 
  • SMRs can further enable remote industrial operations, hydrogen production, and large-scale desalination projects.
• Strengthening Strategic Position: Indigenous technological achievements, such as the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (Kalpakkam), demonstrate India’s technological self-reliance, reduce strategic vulnerabilities, and enhance the country’s negotiating power in global energy and technology partnerships.

What are the Major Challenges Associated with Modernisation of India’s Nuclear Sector?

• Supply Chain and Quality Control Challenges: The mid- and lower-tier supplier base lacks quality standards, modern processes, and capacity, causing gaps in supporting advanced technologies like Light Water Reactors (LWRs) and SMRs, and reliance on a single foreign company for specialized systems.
  • Quality assurance (QA) issues and outdated expertise lead to project delays and production stoppages due to a shortage of qualified QA professionals.
• Cybersecurity Challenges: Global vendors warn of weak cybersecurity in India’s nuclear sector, risking loss of critical plant data and vulnerability to cyber-attacks and ransomware.
• Regulatory Hurdles: The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) oversees design certification, while NPCIL manages quality control, leading to coordination challenges across the supply chain.
• Capacity Challenges: For critical areas like control and instrumentation, indigenisation efforts are heavily dependent on a single public sector enterprise like Electronics Corporation of India Ltd whose capacity was recorded as “limited”.
• Laps in Legal Framework: The Atomic Energy Act, 1962 restricts private participation in India’s nuclear projects, limiting investment, technology development, and slowing progress.
  • Foreign and domestic suppliers fear unlimited liability because of unclear insurance rules, ambiguous definitions of “nuclear damage”, and the risk of civil suits.

What Measures are Required to Modernise India’s Nuclear Sector?

• Strengthening Supply Chain: Implement a National Quality Upgradation Programme to train mid- and lower-tier nuclear suppliers on manufacturing processes and quality standards for LWRs and SMRs. 
  • Simultaneously, develop and certify new vendors for core equipment and specialised systems to expand domestic capacity.
• Enhance Quality Control: Increase manpower by deploying qualified QA professionals for 24/7 coverage, use Third-Party Inspection (TPI) to support in-house QA, and station full-time QA teams at all critical supplier sites.
• Address Cybersecurity Gaps: Implement a state-of-the-art cybersecurity framework across the nuclear ecosystem, covering plant operators and suppliers, to safeguard control systems and critical data from cyber attacks.
• Modernise Legislative Framework: Prioritise passing policy and legal reforms, including major amendments to the Electricity Act, the Atomic Energy Act, and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, to align with global standards, address investor concerns, and encourage foreign collaboration and investment.
• Strategic Development and Competitiveness: Execute the SMR strategy by advancing indigenous SMR development with clear timelines for prototype demonstrations to ensure technology readiness. 
  • Facilitate global exports for qualified Indian suppliers to boost capacity, competitiveness, and quality.

Conclusion

Modernising India’s nuclear sector is crucial for energy security, industrial growth, and strategic autonomy. Strengthening the supplier base, enforcing quality standards, enhancing cybersecurity, and advancing indigenous SMRs will boost reliability, competitiveness, and resilience, ensuring sustainable, low-carbon energy and a robust industrial ecosystem.