India's SHANTI Act of December 2025 Lets Licensed Indian Companies Build and Run Nuclear Plants, and the Draft Rules of 14 August 2026 Give the Licence a 180-Day Clock

The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Act, known as the SHANTI Act, received the President’s assent on 20 December 2025 and was published in the Gazette of India the next day as Act 39 of 2025. It repeals the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act of 2010 and puts both subjects into one statute. Under section 3 of the new law, a company incorporated in India can apply to the Centre for a licence to build, own, operate and decommission a nuclear power plant. The Takshashila Institution’s issue brief notes that the 1962 Act had reserved plant operation to public-sector bodies such as the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL).

What changed on 21 December 2025

Section 3(1) lists who may apply: a government department or any body the government owns or controls, a government company, any other company, a joint venture among those, or any other person the Centre expressly permits by notification. The Act’s definitions exclude companies incorporated outside India. In the Act, “Central Government” means the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), so the licensing authority is the department that also runs the public programme. The Act’s preamble gives the growth of artificial intelligence, supercomputing and chip fabrication as a reason for round-the-clock power, a demand that the article on data centre electricity use quantifies.

A licence is mandatory for building or operating a plant or reactor, for fabricating fuel up to a notified enrichment threshold, for transporting or storing fuel, and for importing or exporting fuel, equipment and nuclear technology. Anything that exposes people to radiation also needs a safety authorisation from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). The Act says it comes into force on a date the Centre notifies, and sections may start on different dates (section 1(2)).

India’s fleet stood at 8.78 GW, excluding the RAPS-1 unit, in government replies to the Lok Sabha on 11 March 2026 and the Rajya Sabha on 19 March 2026. Nuclear supplied about 3.1 per cent of the country’s electricity in 2024-25, the PIB backgrounder of 7 April 2026 records.

What stays with the government

The Act keeps four things with the Centre. Section 3(5) reserves uranium enrichment, spent-fuel management including reprocessing, high-level radioactive waste and heavy water production to the Centre or bodies it wholly owns. Section 5(2) restricts the mining of uranium and thorium to the government, a government company or a government-controlled corporation. Under section 3(4), all source and fissile material stays under the Centre’s surveillance for accounting, and spent fuel must be cooled for a period the AERB sets and then handed to the Centre or sent back to the country that supplied it. The licensee pays for that handover.

Minister of State Jitendra Singh told the Rajya Sabha on 18 December 2025 that the Act concerns civilian energy only and that safety rules are unchanged. He listed quarterly inspections during construction, biannual inspections in operation and licence renewal every five years.

How a licence would work under the draft rules

The DAE published Draft SHANTI Rules and Draft SHANTI Regulations on 14 August 2026 and asked for comments until 8:00 PM on 4 September 2026. The draft Rules would supersede the 1984, 1987, 2004 and 2012 atomic energy rules and the 2011 liability rules and 2015 liability fund rules.

Rule 3 provides one composite licence covering building, owning, operating and decommissioning a plant, and says none of those may be applied for or granted separately. It covers electricity for the grid, captive power for an industrial user, which the rule’s explanation says could be an aluminium or cement plant or a data centre, process heat, hydrogen and medical isotopes, and it defines “reactor” to include deuterium-tritium fusion. An applicant that has existed for three years or less is a “newly formed entity” and must disclose its shareholders, its capital structure and any parent company that is standing behind it. Rule 4 lets the licensing authority arrange visits to an operating plant for an applicant that does not yet understand its obligations.

Rule 32 sets the clock: a licence within 180 days and related permissions within 60 days of the application being admitted, provided the application is complete. Foreign reactor designs must be certified by the regulator of the country of origin and be operating somewhere already (rule 3). The draft AERB Regulations then require a separate safety authorisation at each stage from siting to decommissioning, and under the draft the AERB cannot grant siting authorisation until the design has its approval.

Who pays if something goes wrong

The Act keeps the principle of strict, no-fault liability: the operator pays for nuclear damage whether or not it was careless. Section 13 sets a ceiling for each incident of the rupee equivalent of 300 million Special Drawing Rights, an International Monetary Fund reserve unit, or a higher amount the Centre notifies. Inside that ceiling the operator’s share depends on the reactor’s thermal power (Second Schedule): Rs 100 crore up to 150 MW, Rs 300 crore from above 150 MW up to 750 MW, Rs 750 crore up to 1,500 MW, Rs 1,500 crore up to 3,600 MW and Rs 3,000 crore above 3,600 MW. The lowest tier also covers fuel-cycle plants other than reprocessing and the transport of nuclear material.

The Centre pays what exceeds the operator’s share (section 14), and may seek money under the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, an international fund, if awards go past the ceiling; the Act describes India as a signatory (section 13(3)). The operator must hold insurance or financial security for its share before it operates (section 15). The draft Rules add that shares or bonds offered as that security are pledged to the Centre with a 1:1.33 margin (rule 77), and that a panel reviews the limits every five years (rule 78).

The operator can recover from a supplier only where a written contract allows it or where an individual caused the incident on purpose (section 16). The Act’s definition of nuclear damage covers loss of life, injury and property loss, and lets the Centre notify further heads including the cost of restoring the environment (section 2(21)).

The regulator and the route for disputes

Section 17 deems the AERB to be constituted under the Act. It has a Chairperson, a whole-time member and up to seven part-time members, appointed on the recommendation of a search-cum-selection committee that the Atomic Energy Commission constitutes, with the AERB Chairperson sitting on it for member selections. Members may not take a job with a licensee for two years after leaving (section 18). The PIB reply of 1 April 2026 says the AERB must recommend notification of a nuclear incident within 15 days, and that its safety requirements are the same for public and private operators.

Compensation claims go to a Claims Commissioner of Joint Secretary rank, named within 30 days of an incident’s notification (section 54). Other disputes go first to an Atomic Energy Redressal Advisory Council chaired by the Atomic Energy Commission’s chairperson, with appeal to the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (sections 47 to 51).

What the 100 GW target needs

The government’s roadmap, set out in the Lok Sabha reply of 11 March 2026, takes capacity from 8.78 GW to about 22 GW by 2031-32 through projects now under way, and to 100 GW by 2047. NPCIL is to add another 32 GW after 2032, reaching about 54 GW. The balance of 46 GW is to come from other public-sector enterprises, state governments, private companies and joint ventures. In the Rajya Sabha on 18 December 2025 the minister also gave interim figures of 47 GW by 2037 and 67 GW by 2042.

On 11 October 2026, ThePrint carried a PTI interview with Ajit Kumar Mohanty, the Atomic Energy Commission chairman. He said private players should supply about 30 GW and invest about Rs 7.5 lakh crore, and that he expects a couple of private operators to be running reactors within five years. The same interview puts NPCIL’s fleet at 24 reactors and about 9 GW, with 17 more reactors of about 13 GW under way. On 23 July 2026 the minister told the Rajya Sabha that no private licence had been granted and that applications would be considered once the rules are notified. The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum said on 21 August 2026 that it was coordinating a US industry submission before the 4 September deadline. The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam reached first criticality on 6 April 2026. It is the second stage of the three-stage plan that Homi Bhabha outlined, and the PIB backgrounder of 7 April 2026 lists the SHANTI Act among the measures supporting the Nuclear Energy Mission.

Where the criticism comes from

The Takshashila brief by Lokendra Sharma argues that the liability caps are likely to be inadequate for a moderate or large accident and that dropping the operator’s automatic claim against suppliers dilutes the regime. The MP-IDSA brief of 17 February 2026 describes the Act as an adjustment of existing policy rather than a break with it. It also flags that the Act gives operators no role in setting a policy for spent fuel and waste, and that if the operator’s money and the international fund run out, public funds pay.

A petition, EAS Sarma v Union of India (Writ Petition (Civil) 240/2026), challenges sections including 11 to 14, 16, 17 and 39. Its petitioners are EAS Sarma and five others, represented by Prashant Bhushan, and they argue under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution that the caps and the lack of supplier liability leave victims under-compensated. They also say the process for selecting, appointing and removing the AERB’s Chairperson and members creates a conflict of interest that affects its independence. On 17 August 2026 a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana issued notice for a limited purpose, on whether a constitutional court can decide fair compensation irrespective of the Act, and said section 17(4) should be clarified. The Supreme Court Observer lists the next hearing for 14 October 2026. The government’s position, stated in Parliament, is that the framework keeps safety requirements unchanged and that damage above the operator’s share is covered by government-backed funds and international conventions.

The draft Rules start the 180-day licence period when an application is admitted, and the minister’s reply of 23 July 2026 says private applications will be considered only after the final rules are notified.