Indigenous reactors top pick for nuclear expansion. At the BloombergNEF Summit in New Delhi this week, a quiet consensus emerged among the country's biggest industrial houses. If India is to scale civil nuclear capacity from 8 GW to 100 GWe by 2047, it will do it first with what it already has - the 700 MWe Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor.
Representatives from NTPC, Adani Atomic Energy and Jindal Steel were blunt. Existing 700 MWe PHWR technology could be a good starting point to scale up capacity in the initial phase given the availability of established design standards, a mature domestic supply chain and an existing ecosystem of vendors and expertise.
The timing is not coincidental. Nearly a week earlier, India released draft rules of the SHANTI Act, laying out the regulatory framework for a broader nuclear power ecosystem, including private participation, captive generation, licensing, safety oversight and nuclear liability. For 40 years a tightly regulated strategic sector, nuclear is now being opened to private players.
NTPC's target is 30 GWe, Adani group's 10 GWe, Jindal Steel's 18 GWe in coming years. And all three said the same thing: foreign reactor technologies and small modular reactors could play a role at a later stage as the sector matures.
Vivek Sharma, Business Head of Adani Atomic Energy, framed the cost logic. "We have an advantage in India that we have 700 MWe design, which is standard, approved, operational, and has regulatory blessings. And most importantly relative supply-chain in India. It's almost indigenized, 90-95%.
"The argument is fleet mode. India could leverage this established ecosystem by deploying 700 MWe PHWRs in fleet mode, followed by Pressurised Water Reactors. PWRs alone would not be sufficient to achieve 100 GWe.
But there is a caveat Sharma himself added. "So we need to have other technologies, including PWR, as well as at some point of time SMR. But in both cases, the key will be that they need to come to India and start looking at local items as much as possible. Because the cost will matter a lot in India and for making any commercial sense, the consumer has to buy, it has to commit a price which is acceptable.
"Naveen Ahlawat of Jindal Steel echoed that global reactor technologies will need to maximise localisation to remain commercially viable.
For New Delhi, the message is clear: indigenisation is not nostalgia, it is economics. A 100 GWe target cannot be imported. It has to be manufactured, and the only reactor India can manufacture today at scale is its own PHWR. Foreign designs and SMRs can wait until supply chains, regulatory approvals and standardisation emerge.