With plans to commission 20 plants, India looks to tap nuclear power faster

Recent government announ­ce­ments on accelerating the use of nuclear power in India suggests a significant increase in the pace.
 

Earlier in January, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that public sector companies wo­­­uld be roped in to help build plants. Plans are afoot to commission at least 20 nuclear pow­­er plants by 2031, according to a December Lok Sabha reply.
 

India has historically taken more than a decade to get plants in action, shows a Busi­ness Standard analysis of data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The median construction time for nuclear plants — which is the average construction time taken from the first pouring of concrete for the construction of the plant to the time it connects to the grid — in India is 14.2 years. In comparison, it takes 5.7 years to connect a plant to the grid in China (see chart 1).
 

Though it still has only a single-digit share in total electricity production, India has been looking to tap nuclear power faster by building plants in fleet mode. Such plants are built in five years from the first pour of concrete. In 2021, 3.2 per cent of the electricity produced in India was from nuclear sources, an increase from 2.8 per cent a decade ago (see chart 2). India’s share in the global nuclear production has doubled from 0.8 per cent to 1.5 per cent in the same period (see chart 3).
 

According to a pre-pandemic estimate by the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation that helps with policy recommendations in the ene­rgy sector,  global nuclear pow­e­r production will grow by 46 per cent by 2040 and 90 per cent of this increase in generation will take place in India and China.