Nuclear Power: How NTPC may steal a march over its competitors

Shares of NTPC Green Energy dropped over 6% after the company’s three-month shareholder lock-in period ended on February 24. This triggered a wave of sell-offs, with 18.33 crore shares (2% of the outstanding equity) now eligible for trading. While this doesn’t necessarily mean all these shares will flood the market, it has raised concerns about potential increased supply.

India’s largest power producer, NTPC Ltd, plans to go big on nuclear energy to meet India’s growing power demand through cleaner fuels. To do so, NTPC, unlike its private competitors, does not have to wait for the law to be amended, senior officials of the company told Moneycontrol.

This is because the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, allows any company whose board is appointed by the government of India to get into the nuclear business.

“NTPC is a government entity and unlike private companies, we do not have to wait for the Atomic Energy Act to be amended. Hence, we've gone ahead with our plans and registered our nuclear arm, which has been named NTPC Parmanu Urja Nigam Ltd,” said a senior company executive on condition of anonymity.

Corporates such as the Adani group, Tata Power, Reliance Industries and L&T are open to investing in the nuclear energy sector. But being private firms, they will have to wait for the government to amend the law to begin their work.

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This would make NTPC the only PSU other than the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), which is under the Ministry of Atomic Energy, to get into nuclear energy. NTPC comes under the Ministry of Power.

NTPC is currently in talks with six-seven states for land to build nuclear power plants. It has ruled out the northeast and states such as Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir due to potential seismic activities, officials told Moneycontrol.

Planning since 2010

Asked why NTPC had not got into nuclear power earlier if the laws permitted it to, the official said that NTPC had started planning to diversify into nuclear energy sometime around 2010.

“That was when we signed the agreement with NPCIL for a joint venture to build the 2.8 GW Mahi Banswara Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (MBRAPP). We had even recruited engineers and sent them for training at various NPCIL nuclear plants. We did everything that is done to start a new business, including manpower planning and so on,” the official said.

Also Read: Budget announces National Nuclear Energy Mission as India chases clean energy.

“But then Fukushima happened and the government sort of signalled that, `let's go slow on this.' So, almost all over the world nuclear power was paused. In India, we also decided to wait and see how we could make the nuclear plants really safe,” the official explained.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster, which occurred on March 11, 2011, was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, triggered by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that disabled the plant's cooling systems, leading to multiple reactor core meltdowns and the release of significant amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

Conventional nuclear reactors too

Apart from small modular reactors (SMRs), which are being promoted by the government for greater private participation, NTPC is also going to foray into conventional nuclear energy. The company is planning to have at least 30 gigawatt (GW) of nuclear energy capacity by 2045, for which it is planning to use a mix of technologies.

“NTPC is going to have both conventional reactors and SMRs in its nuclear fleet to meet India’s growing power demand with cleaner fuels,” NTPC Chairperson and Managing Director Gurdeep Singh said at the recently concluded India Energy Week this month.

SMRs are significantly smaller than a conventional nuclear power plant, generating much less electricity (typically under 300 megawatts) while offering advantages like quicker construction, greater flexibility in deployment, and enhanced safety features due to its modular design and smaller scale. SMRs are suitable for smaller grids or areas with limited space, whereas a conventional nuclear power plant produces significantly more electricity but requires a larger footprint and longer construction time.

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India’s current nuclear power capacity is 8.18 GW, which is projected to grow to 22.48 GW by 2031-32, and eventually to 100 GW by 2047. To achieve this, India has announced a National Nuclear Energy Mission with a budgetary outlay of Rs 20,000 crore, for which laws are to be amended to enable private participation.

In his recent visit to the US and France, Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured commitments from President Donald Trump and President Emmanuel Macron, respectively, to build nuclear reactors in India.