Skip to content
Science & Technologyv6 · 5 versions

SHANTI Act & the Nuclear Opening

For six decades India's atomic programme ran under the Atomic Energy Act of 1962, a Cold War-era law that kept nuclear power a state monopoly. The SHANTI Act, 2025 was enacted to replace it and the 2010 civil-liability law, letting private firms build and run reactors under licence, dropping supplier liability and making the safety regulator statutory. On 12 August 2026 the government set out the rest of the plan in the Lok Sabha: 100 GWe of nuclear capacity by 2047, at least five home-built small modular reactors by 2033, thorium at the far end of the three-stage programme, and a new reactor devoted to medical isotopes. Backgrounders published on 28 August 2026 size the fleet that plan starts from: 24 reactors at seven sites, 8,780 MW in all, with nine more units building. When the Act's own reforms legally begin is still not stated.

Last updated 1 September 202615 min read
Latest update
Sizes the fleet the new law governs: 24 reactors at seven sites and 8,780 MW today, nine units building with 7.5 GW between them, ten more in preparation, and ten fleet-mode heavy-water reactors cleared. Adds where India's thorium lies and why Homi Bhabha's 1954 plan starts with natural uranium, the size classes behind the small-reactor push, the radiation-dose and waste rules that govern a station, and what atomic energy does away from the grid — cancer care, mutation-bred crops, food irradiation, a rare-earth reference standard, semiconductor-grade boron from Talcher and Kalpakkam's hydrogen plant driven by reactor heat.

Read the full living note — free

The complete note in both exam lenses (UPSC analytical / fact capsule), its full version history, and “what changed since you last read” — plus tonight's quiz.

Open in CA·Wiki

AI-assisted, human-reviewed · sourced from PIB, RBI & ministries · editorial policy

More living notes in Science & Technology

Browse all topics →

SHANTI Act & the Nuclear Opening — Science & Technology current affairs | CA·Wiki