SHANTI Act 2025 Explained: India's Nuclear Power Expansion Gets New Legislation

The SHANTI Act 2025 explained: India's nuclear power expansion is gaining momentum through new legislation. The SHANTI Act 2025 allows private participation across the civilian nuclear sector. This law replaces older acts and modernizes the nuclear framework for future growth. Australia's uranium exports will also support India's expanding nuclear generation capacity. Manufacturers are preparing to scale up equipment production for rising demand.

India's push to rapidly expand nuclear power has gathered fresh momentum on two fronts.

Even as India and Australia have completed the administrative arrangements to enable Australian uranium exports for peaceful purposes under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, the country's nuclear supply chain is also beginning to gear up for a larger role, with equipment manufacturers preparing to scale up capacity amid expectations of rising demand.

The developments mark one of the first tangible signs of a policy overhaul set in motion by the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025.

Also read: Nuclear equipment makers expand capacity as India opens sector

Earlier today, ET reported that companies supplying critical nuclear equipment are drawing up expansion plans as power producers line up projects under the new legal framework, which, for the first time, allows private participation across large parts of India's civilian nuclear sector.

Together with the Australia uranium arrangement, the developments have brought renewed attention to the legislation that fundamentally rewrote India's nuclear rulebook.

What is the SHANTI Act 2025? A law to replace two

Passed in December 2025, the SHANTI Act repealed the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, replacing them with a single umbrella legislation governing India's civilian nuclear ecosystem.

The overhaul was aimed at modernising a legal framework that had evolved over decades but was increasingly seen as inadequate for the country's long-term ambition of scaling nuclear capacity to 100 GW by 2047.

More than a consolidation of laws, the legislation seeks to transform the way India's nuclear sector is organised—opening commercial opportunities to private players while preserving sovereign control over strategically sensitive activities.

Why is India reforming its nuclear policy now?

For decades, India's civilian nuclear programme remained overwhelmingly under government control. The SHANTI Act changes that equation by allowing licensed government companies, private firms and joint ventures to participate across a wide spectrum of activities.

The law permits eligible entities to build, own, operate and decommission nuclear power plants, undertake nuclear fuel fabrication—including conversion, refining and enrichment of uranium-235 up to prescribed thresholds—import and transport nuclear fuel, manufacture specialised equipment and pursue research, development and innovation in peaceful nuclear applications.

But the opening is carefully calibrated. The Centre continues to retain exclusive authority over sensitive areas such as heavy water production, spent fuel management, high-level radioactive waste handling and other strategic activities, while regulatory oversight is strengthened through statutory recognition of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.

What are the key provisions of SHANTI Act?

Another defining feature of the legislation is its overhaul of India's civil liability framework for nuclear damage.

The SHANTI Act narrows an operator's right of recourse against suppliers. Under the new framework, such recourse is available only where it is expressly provided for in a written contract or where nuclear damage results from an intentional act. The earlier provision permitting recourse in cases of a supplier's "wilful act or gross negligence" has been dropped.

The legislation also introduces a graded operator liability structure, requires operators to maintain insurance or other financial security mechanisms, establishes a Nuclear Liability Fund for specified situations involving government liability, and creates dedicated mechanisms—including a Nuclear Damage Claims Commission and an Atomic Energy Redressal Advisory Council—to handle disputes and compensation claims.

How it matters now

The impact of the law is beginning to show beyond policy circles.

Equipment manufacturers such as Tema India, Walchandnagar Industries, KSB Ltd and Electronet Equipments are preparing to expand capacities as expectations grow around the government's nuclear expansion programme. Industry executives see opportunities spanning specialised forgings, pumps, heat exchangers, spent fuel storage systems and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors.

The momentum has coincided with India and Australia's decision to operationalise uranium exports under their 2015 nuclear cooperation agreement, strengthening fuel supply prospects as India seeks to rapidly expand nuclear generation capacity.

Also read: Nuclear power output to rise 44% in 10 years; India, China key drivers

How could SHANTI Act transform India's nuclear energy sector?

The SHANTI Act is as much about creating an industrial ecosystem as it is about generating electricity.

By opening the sector to private participation, establishing a clearer liability regime, strengthening regulatory institutions and creating specialised dispute-resolution mechanisms, the legislation attempts to lay the legal foundation for a much larger nuclear industry. At the same time, it preserves government control over strategic parts of the fuel cycle, reflecting the dual objective of expanding commercial participation without diluting national security oversight.

As India works towards its 100 GW nuclear capacity target by 2047, the SHANTI Act is poised to become the framework on which that ambition rests. The law may have been enacted last December, but the investments, partnerships and supply chains now beginning to take shape suggest its real impact is only starting to unfold.