India has indicated a significant shift in its nuclear energy strategy with the Union Budget 2025-26. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement of the Nuclear Energy Mission outlines ambitious targets, modest financial allocations, and significantly, some amendments to the Atomic Energy Act (1962) and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (2010), aimed at accelerating private sector participation. With the country’s rapidly growing industrial sector and rising energy demands, the Finance Minister emphasised the urgent need to diversify India’s energy mix, positioning nuclear power as a crucial pillar in the low-carbon development strategy for realising the vision of a “Viksit Bharat” (Developed India) by 2047 and a “net zero” by 2070.
In this interview, Hely Desai sits down with Rakesh Sood, former Indian diplomat and Special Envoy of the Prime Minister for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, to decode the implications of these potentially transformative nuclear developments following the budget announcement.
Hely Desai: In the Union Budget 2025, nuclear energy received significant attention once again. The Finance Minister set an ambitious target of 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2047—nearly 12 times the current capacity. Given that this goal has been revised several times over the years, do you think it is now achievable? What key challenges have hindered progress so far?
Amb. Rakesh Sood: To put it in context, in the 1970s, India set a target of 10 GW to be achieved by 2000. We are at 8.2 GW today. Each time a new target has been set, it has become more ambitious and, understandably, more difficult to achieve. So, while the targets of 22 GW by 2031 and eventually 100 GW by 2047 are ambitious targets, their realisation will depend on how we prepare the framework to achieve it.
