India brings nuclear fusion into energy planning as deployment talks begin

The SHANTI Act draft rules and a government-appointed expert panel are bringing fusion into India's regulatory and energy-planning framework, though commercial power generation remains decades away

While energy sector experts in India have been busy debating crude oil sourcing, the renewable energy capacity boom and the much-awaited entry of private industry into fission-based nuclear power over the past year, what has gone largely unnoticed is the country's effort to develop a different and much more potent energy resource: nuclear fusion.

 

From recognising the technology — often cited as the ultimate solution for energy generation and security — in the SHANTI Act, and even specifying the ‘deuterium-tritium’ pathway for future fusion reactors in the draft SHANTI Rules, to setting up a dedicated committee of experts to prepare a roadmap for the deployment of nuclear fusion-based power generation in India, the government seems to have gone into action mode to shift the discussion from research to deployment.

 

 

“There has definitely been a lot of positive action in the past few months regarding the discussion to promote nuclear fusion as a source for energy generation. However, there are some changes required in the draft rules and regulations and the stakeholders are submitting their suggestions,” said Prabhat Ranjan, co-founder of ASPL Fusion, a nuclear fusion start-up, and chairman (research, innovation and international relations) of the Dr D Y Patil Pratishthan.

 

Ranjan currently heads a seven-member committee set up by the power ministry in January 2026 to prepare a roadmap for nuclear fusion-based power generation.

What is nuclear fusion and why does it matter?

In nuclear fusion reactors, two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. Fusion reactions take place in a state of matter called plasma, which is a hot, charged gas made of positive ions and free-moving electrons, with unique properties distinct from solids, liquids or gases.

 

As a source of baseload power, fusion could replace coal, gas and nuclear fission plants and provide steady, round-the-clock electricity. Its possible applications also include supplying intense industrial heat, producing clean hydrogen fuel, desalinating seawater and propelling deep-space rockets.

 

India has built two primary experimental nuclear fusion reactors, or tokamaks, at the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The country's first indigenous experimental fusion reactor, ADITYA, has been operational since 1989. It was upgraded in 2016 with advanced magnetic configurations.

 

IPR also houses the Steady State Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1), an experimental magnetic confinement device used to study plasma physics.

 

India is also a formal member of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's largest fusion research project and experimental nuclear fusion reactor, being built in France. Indian engineers and industries have supplied major hardware systems, including the giant cryostat and cooling systems for the project.

How do the SHANTI Act and draft rules cover fusion?

The SHANTI Act provided for the future development of nuclear fusion reactors by defining “nuclear energy” as energy released from atomic nuclei as a result of any process, “including the fission and fusion processes”.

 

Further, the draft SHANTI Rules, released earlier this month, state that, regarding the grant of licences for the production, use and disposal of nuclear energy, a “reactor” includes nuclear fission as well as deuterium-tritium reaction-based fusion reactors.

 

The rules further state that the government will issue notifications taking into account the classification of radiation sources on the basis of their hazard potential and radiation-generating equipment such as particle accelerators and fusion devices.

 

“For setting up of laboratory scale or bench scale research facilities including nuclear fusion devices, which may require handling of small quantities of source material or fissile material or any radioactive material as notified, no licence will be required from central government,” the draft rules say.

 

Experts say what has changed in the past year is that fusion is beginning to appear in India’s regulatory and energy-planning discussions, even though the country’s fusion research programme itself is long-standing.

 

“The draft SHANTI Rules count deuterium–tritium fusion reactors as reactors for licensing purposes and exempt bench-scale fusion research from central licensing. IPR scientists have also set out a route from the present tokamaks to a fusion–fission hybrid, SST-Bharat, and a demonstration reactor around 2060. That is the substance of the shift: fusion is being treated as a future power technology that will need rules and engineering, rather than as science alone,” said Rohit Vijay, associate fellow at CSEP.

 

However, he cautioned that the rules are still in a consultative phase, and placing fusion under the same licence as fission, as mentioned in the draft rules, is the opposite of what other nations such as the US, UK and Germany have done. The question of how India should regulate it, therefore, remains open.

 

“And nothing here amounts to a funded programme to build a fusion power plant,” he said.

How does India's fusion programme compare globally?

Vijay added that India has been in fusion for a long time, as seen in IPR's three tokamaks — ADITYA-U, SST-1 and a small spherical tokamak commissioned this year — and a roughly 9 per cent stake in ITER that has taught Indian industry to build large vacuum vessels, cryogenic distribution, neutron shielding, and heating and power systems to fusion specifications.

 

Nonetheless, it is not as if India will achieve nuclear fusion — often touted as the holy grail of energy sufficiency for the planet — any time soon. Nor are other nations likely to get there in a hurry.

 

“China finishes BEST in 2027 and wants a burning deuterium–tritium plasma and a first electricity demonstration around 2030. The UK has put £1.3 billion into STEP, inside a £2.5 billion fusion strategy, for a prototype plant running in 2040,” Vijay pointed out.

 

“Japan has pulled its demonstration target from 2050 into the 2030s. American private firms, sitting on over $14 billion of investor money, will try for net energy gain next year, and one has already contracted to sell fusion power in 2028. Even ITER, where India is a partner, will not burn tritium before 2039, a reminder of how far the physics is from a working plant. India's own roadmap, from IPR last year, aims for a demonstration reactor around 2060.”

 

Experts say India's aim should be to convert its existing scientific capability into a national fusion-development capability, while recognising that fusion is an option-value investment for the 2050s rather than a supply solution for the short and medium term.

Can fusion become part of India's clean-energy future?

According to Anujesh Dwivedi, partner at Deloitte India, a breakthrough in nuclear fusion reactors could unleash the potential to produce round-the-clock clean and safe power at scale, which could help address India's climate change and energy security challenges.

 

In a meeting to discuss fusion-based power generation with ASPL Fusion and Hylenr Technologies last December, Ghanshyam Prasad, chairman of the Central Electricity Authority, acknowledged that fusion-based technology could play a major role in meeting India's carbon-neutral energy needs.

 

“The recent success in Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam is a great encouragement for more advanced R&D activities in the nuclear space in India. While certain countries have invested more capital in R&D activities, a breakthrough creating a working commercial nuclear fusion reactor remains a work in progress. Creating a platform for supporting start-ups focussed on nuclear fusion and supporting them in seeking access to seed capital as well as allowing them to leverage the capabilities and infrastructure of public sector entities could accelerate the pace of efforts being made in this space,” Dwivedi said.