Daybreak - The Shanti Bill opens India’s nuclear sector. An American firm is first in line

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

India wants to generate 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047. As of now, it produces less than 9 GW. For decades, nuclear energy in India was built, owned, and run only by the state. That is now changing. In December, Parliament passed the Shanti Bill, opening the sector to private players. And an American nuclear company, Holtec International, wants to build 200 small modular reactors across India, mostly close to industrial hubs. Supporters say smaller reactors can be built faster and closer to demand but critics warn about regulation, safety, and accountability. Tune in.Are you a founder or hiring manager? We want to hear your best curveball interview questions. Take our survey.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first studio recording, episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Can you guess what that sound was? Okay, let me play it again. That was the sound of the second worst nuclear disaster of the world after Chernobyl, 15 years ago in Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was right after a tsunami triggered by an earthquake sent a monster

wave, taller than the walls of the sea, into the power plant. Now, if you were around in 2011, you probably remember the videos as well, low resolution with grey skies and the plant in the distance sending billows of smoke into the sky. The seawater basically flooded the backup generators and cut off power to cooling systems in the plant. And without the cooling, the fuel rosting overheated and hydrogen began to build up and caused massive explosions. Three reactor cores melted and more than 150,000 people from the area had to be evacuated. The radiation spread into the land and into the sea. Now, here is the important thing that we need to remember about the Fukushima plant.

The plant was owned and operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company, commonly known as TEPCO. and TEPCO used to then be a private electric utility. Now, before you say, oh yes, this is what happens when you open up a sector to private players, here is what you should know. All the reactor designs, safety standards and emergency planning in Fukushima were approved and overseen by the Japanese government. So private operators and public regulators both shared responsibility and both failed to fully account for known risks. So, after Fukushima, nuclear power stopped being something that governments talked about confidently and started becoming something that they explained defensively.

In India, though, our system stayed exactly as it was before, owned, operated and expanded by the government. And this approach kept things controlled. It also kept things small. Until now. In December last month, the Lokshaba passed the Shanti or the sustainable harnessing and advancement of nuclear energy for transforming India bill. Basically, opening up the entire nuclear sector to private players. And now enter an American nuclear company that says that it wants to install 200 small nuclear

reactors across India. Not near coastlines, not just for cities, but inside industrial belts next to steel plants, data centers, and manufacturing hubs. Essentially, in places where electricity is not a utility, but it is a constraint. And the company argues that the problem with India's nuclear power aspirations was never engineering talent or political intent. It says instead that it failed to scale because it was built like this bespoke monument every single time. And the alternative, the company says, is smaller reactors. Factory build, repeatable and installed close to where power is actually being consumed.

If this approach works, nuclear energy will start. Stop being a distant infrastructure dream and become an actual industrial capacity for India. But if it doesn't, India will learn very publicly that changing the rules is actually the easy bot. Making nuclear power ordinary is something else entirely. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nick Das Sharma, and I don't chase the new cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel Vargheese and I will come to you with one

business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday the 6th of January. As of now, India generates less than 9 gigawatts of nuclear power. But the stated goal for 2047 is 100 gigawatts. Now, the gap between these two numbers is not really about demand projections or fuel availability. It is about how long it takes to build anything this complex when only one institution was allowed to try for the longest time. But that is changing now with the Shanti Bill. And the company who wants to pick up the baton is Holtech International. It is a private American nuclear equipment supplier that is valued at about $14 billion.

And its specialty is something called small modular reactors or SMRs. Each unit produces 300 megawatts of power. Two units together form a plant. Basically, they can produce. 600 megawatts from a footprint of about 30 acres of land. And that matters because India's existing reactors, usually around 700 megawatts, need closer to 80 acres and about 10 years to build. Holtec says that it can do it in 5 years. How? Design. Holtek's reactors do not rely on large water bodies. They are modular, built in factories and can be assembled on

This means nuclear power can now go places where it could not easily go before. For example, inland industrial zones, retired coal plant sites and private industrial campuses. Holtec wants to build 200 of these plants across India. And the timing of the Shanti Bill now seems quite deliberate. Because like I told you earlier, India wants 100 gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2047. As of now, we are just a little over 8 gigawatts from 24 reactors across 7 sites in the country. A former NPCIL engineer actually put it quite bluntly to my colleague, the Ken reporter Keshav Brunsuka. He said government agencies alone can never get India there.

Holtex founder and CEO Chris Singh also agrees. Looking at the kind of engineering talent that India has, Singh asks a sharper question. He says, if the talent exists, why is the output still so low? And he thinks that the answer lies in structure. Which is why Holtex plan is to move first, set the standards, build the supply chain, train workers, and create a commercial model that makes SMRs repeatable and not customized. The company says that it will invest over $100 million in the first two years and create around 5,000 jobs. And Singh, of course, is not subtle about.

about the scale of this opportunity. He talks about SMRs powering entire industrial corridors, even smaller towns. Basically, nuclear energy closer to where people live. But for India, this would be a radical shift.

And this is where the unease begins. Okay, quick pause for something that we're working on. If you're a founder or hiring manager, my colleagues, Rahil and Vidharri over at 90,000 hours podcast, won't you help? They are collecting the counterintuitive or curveball interview questions that you ask applicants that help you understand how someone really thinks, learns and handles ambiguity. You know, the stuff that often gets left out of the CV.

If there is a question that you rely on and an answer that has genuinely stood out, we would love to hear it. Think if you had one superpower, what would it be? Or if you had to create a product today and sell 1,000 SKUs, how would you do it? The weirder, the better. They are using these responses in an upcoming episode of the podcast, and you will find the survey link in the show notes. It'll just take a couple of minutes. Help them out. The nuclear plants, closer to inhabited areas, has never been a neutral choice in India.

The country has a long memory when it comes to nuclear opposition. Protests in Kudankulam, Gorakpur, Jayatapur and Mithi-Vordi have stalled or derailed projects entirely. Entire plans were delayed for years and some never moved past planning. Now, SMRs, by design, compressed distance. They trade remoteness for efficiency. And that makes political and community consent unavoidable. And it also is what makes the Shanti bill contentious. The bill breaks the state's monopoly over nuclear power and allows private participation under a defined liability framework.

But critics argue that it removes liability from fuel and technology suppliers in the event of an accident. Opposition lawmakers have called for deeper scrutiny and warned against what they are describing as privatizing profit while socializing risk. Resistance actually exists even within the system. NPCIIL and the Department of Atomic Energy have operated as monopolies for decades. Opening the sector now means rewriting institutional roles, regulatory habits and internal power structures. That transition is unlikely to be smooth. And beyond the politics, there's also the harder question of whether India's nuclear architecture was ever designed for speed.

India's nuclear program actually rests on a three-stage plan that was conceived in the 50s. Stage 1 was meant to be when reactors run on natural uranium and produce plutonium. Stage 2, fast-breeder reactors use that plutonium and convert thorium into usable fuel. Stage 3, which is still largely theoretical, would rely heavily on thorium. All of India's operational reactors today belong to stage 1. Stage 2 has faced repeated delays and stage 3 mostly remains only on paper. But SMRs bypass this architecture entirely. They run on low enriched uranium, which is fueled that India can import under the 2008 Indo-US nuclear deal.

No waiting for breeder reactors and no waiting for thorium technology to mature. What's important to note here is that they don't actually replace the three-stage program. They sit alongside it. Larger reactors still matter, but SMRs fill capacity gaps faster. So on paper, the economics of it are quite compelling. Nuclear power has the lowest lifetime carbon emissions of any major energy source. It also has the highest energy return on investment. For every unit of energy consumed, a nuclear reactor produces about 75 units.

And this makes nuclear particularly attractive to energy-intensive industries under pressure to decarbonize. Steelmakers, for example. On-site nuclear power could help them cut emissions, avoid the EU carbon tax and remain globally competitive. Tata steel and gender steel have reportedly shown interest. Holtek is also thinking beyond India. If it can demonstrate SMRs operating at scale here, under land constraints, water stress and uneven grids,

it creates a reference case for emerging economies in Africa and the rest of Southeast Asia. Holtec CEO Singh claims that producing SMRs in India could be 40% cheaper than it is in the United States. Over time, India becomes a manufacturing and export base. For now, though, none of this is locked in. Whole Tech does not have a single contract. Talks are ongoing with the government bodies and private companies, and everything depends on when the Shanti Bill becomes law and how its rules are interpreted. Even then, the obstacles are significant. India has no regulatory framework for SMRs. Atomic Energy Regulatory Board will have to draft safety codes, licensing procedures, inspection regimes and emergency protocols from scratch.

Globally, only two SMRs operate in the entire world. One is in Russia and the other is in China, which means very little regulatory precedent. And then there is also the issue of supply chain. India lacks a deep base of tier two nuclear suppliers. LNT can manufacture major components and Tata can provide engineering services. But beyond that, the ecosystem thins out quickly. Holtek says that it needs at least 100 suppliers. Many simply do not exist.

The company plans to expand its development center in Pune, scale up a condenser manufacturing plant in the Hage and encourage international partners like Mitsubishi Electric and Hyundai Engineering and Construction to form joint ventures with Indian firms. If parts cannot be outsourced, Singh says that Holtek will manufacture them in, house. But even globally, scale is difficult. China planned to install 150 nuclear reactors by 2035 and with less than a decade to go, only 58 are currently generating power.

Holtex's first SMR anywhere in the world is expected to come online in Michigan by 2030. It's first in India, Singh hopes, will be by 2032. Now, experts say that this timeline is feasible. Building the rules. remaining reactors fast enough to meet the 2047 target, though, is far less certain. But Holtec believes that once the first reactor works, momentum will follow. But Fukushima showed us that momentum can cut both ways. The plant functioned within a system where private operators built and ran the reactors while public institutions set the rules.

And the gaps between the two went unaddressed. As of now, India's nuclear sector is organized very differently. because it is highly institutionalized with a single state-run model dominating design, operation and oversight. As private players enter the picture, whether that structure adapts may matter as much as the technology itself. If you have any thoughts on the Shanti Bill or on India opening up the nuclear power sector to private players, please do write to me at podcasts at the ken.com with daybreak in the subject line. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and see you tomorrow. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform.

What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague, Snitha Sharma, and edited by Rajiv CN. Thank you.