NEW DELHI: The new nuclear energy bill, which was passed in Rajya Sabha by voice vote after a four-hour discussion while rejecting many amendments moved by opposition to send it to a parliamentary panel for scrutiny, marks a decisive shift in India’s nuclear governance, embedding safety oversight in law across the lifecycle of an atomic plant, unlike the existing framework that relied largely on executive discretion and post-accident accountability.Sustainable Harnessing of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill will allow private participation in India’s tightly controlled civil nuclear sector as the country seeks to meet its clean energy goals by 2047. As opposition raised safety and liability concerns, officials said it establishes a statutory safety regime that ensures continuous compliance rather than reliance on one-time permissions. It seeks to provide for a “pragmatic civil liability regime for nuclear damage and confer statutory status to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)”.Officials said unlike the previous law – in which nuclear safety oversight was shaped largely by broad executive authority and administrative rules – SHANTI fundamentally recasts the framework by shifting to a “statutory, lifecycle-based regulatory regime”. Govt manages radiation risks and radioactive waste, but does not mandate separate safety authorisations or legally bind safety obligations to each phase of a nuclear plant’s life. AERB’s stage-wise consent process for construction, commissioning and operation existed only as an administrative practice. Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (CLND) Act, 2010 further reinforced a post-accident approach by focusing on compensation and insurance rather than prevention.“These laws (Atomic Energy Act and CLND Act) treated safety primarily as a post-damage responsibility, rather than a proactive governance requirement,” said an official. SHANTI separates “permission to operate” from “permission to operate safely”, requiring both a licence and an independent safety authorisation. Any activity involving radiation exposure risk – including construction, operation, transport, storage, decommissioning, or waste management – will now require explicit safety approval.It also consolidates regulation, enforcement, civil liability and dispute resolution within a single statute, reducing legal complexity and compliance uncertainty. “It grants a clear statutory authority to AERB to inspect facilities, investigate incidents, issue binding directions, and suspend or cancel operations that do not meet safety standards. Regulatory action is no longer dependent on executive discretion. Accident prevention is significantly enhanced by legally recognising serious risk situations as nuclear incidents, even without actual damage,” said the official. Core functions such as fuel enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and heavy water production will remain exclusively under Centre’s control.Anujesh Dwivedi, partner at Deloitte India, said continuing with the existing legal framework would make it difficult for nuclear energy to replace thermal power in the long run. “Over decades, India added only about 8GW of nuclear capacity. Scaling this up to 100GW by 2047- and potentially 300GW or more by 2070 – required major reforms, which these regulations seek to address,” he said.Meanwhile, PM Modi said passing of the bill marks a “transformational moment for our technology landscape”.
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