Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private sector corporation, Tata Power and Adani Power are among six private entities that are learnt to have formally expressed interest to set up small modular nuclear reactor-based projects.In response to requests for proposals floated by the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd to set up its proposed ‘Bharat Small Modular Reactors’ or BSMRs, Hindalco Industries, JSW Energy and Jindal Steel & Power too have evinced interest.Some 16 sites have been tentatively marked across six states — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The BSMRs are proposed to be constructed and operated under NPCIL’s supervision and the state-run company will retain operational control and asset ownership, while the successful bidders will hold beneficial rights over the net electricity generated for captive use.The fineprint shows that the successful bidder must fund the entire project, including capital costs, and will be required to repay NPCIL for all costs incurred by the latter across the lifecycle of the project — from pre-project activities to final decommissioning. In return, these private players, which operate large industrial utilities ranging from petrochemical and edible oil refining units to cement and steel plants, will get access to long-term, assured electricity output from the project for their captive use.SMRs – unproven commercially, yet promisingSMRs – small modular reactors, which are nuclear reactors with a capacity of 30MWe (megawatt electric) to 300 MWe per unit – are increasingly seen as important for nuclear energy to remain a commercially competitive option in the future, especially when large nuclear projects are facing implementation delays across geographies.These new and smaller nuclear reactors have about a third of the generating capacity of most traditional nuclear power reactors, but can produce a large amount of low-carbon electricity are seen as a possible solution to meet the power needs of energy-intensive industries such as steel, aluminium, and cement. They can also be set up by repurposing thermal power plants that are to be decommissioned.This also comes at a time when global technology companies such as Google and Microsoft are increasingly turning to nuclear sources of energy to supply the power needed to run vast data centres that drive the AI boom. While renewables have been the first choice for some of these companies so far, there are hurdles that green power poses.Story continues below this adNuclear offers a solution, especially since the grid needs new electricity solutions that offer a clean, round-the-clock power source that can tide over the limitations of renewables – not generating power when the sun’s not shining or the wind is not blowing. Not having enough viable grid-scale storage options at this point in time is a problem in scaling up renewables. SMRs potentially offer solutions to tide over some of these shortfalls.As of now, two SMR projects have reached the operational stage globally. One is an SMR named Akademik Lomonosov floating power unit in Russia that has two-modules of 35 MWe (megawatt electric) and started commercial operation in May 2020. The other is a demonstration SMR project called HTR-PM in China that was grid-connected in December 2021 and is reported to have started commercial operations in December 2023. Other global companies that are in the fray with SMR technology include New Jersey-based Holtec International, Rolls-Royce SMR, NuScale’s VOYGR SMR, Westinghouse Electric’s AP300 SMR and GE-Hitachi’s BWRX-300.There are, however, some question marks over the viability of nuclear projects in general, and also SMRs in particular.India’s SMR ambitionsThe BSMR project is part of the Indian government’s efforts to get into the manufacturing value chain of small modular reactors — increasingly seen as important for nuclear energy to remain a commercially competitive option into the future. India is working to get into this space, both as a way of fulfilling its commitment to clean energy transition, and bundling SMRs as a technology-led foreign policy pitch.Story continues below this adNew Delhi is pushing SMRs as a technology of promise that can help in industrial decarbonisation, including a determined hard sell of the country’s ability to take something of a leadership role in the dissemination of this technology. These are important in offering base load power that could give grid operators some degree of flexibility, especially given the imperative of inducting renewables into the grid brings with it the challenge of inducting more base load generation to balance out the vagaries of renewable power output. While thermal generation continues to be important in this regard, nuclear energy offers a more carbon-neutral base load generation option.Though India’s civil nuclear programme has expertise in manufacturing smaller reactor types – 220MWe PHWRs (pressurised heavy water reactors) and above – the problem for India is its reactor technology. Based on heavy water and natural Uranium, the PHWRs are seen as increasingly out of sync with the pressurised water reactors or PWRs (a light-water nuclear reactor type that constitute the large majority of the world’s nuclear power plants) are now the most dominant reactor type across the world.Technology MixThe government’s choice of the technology mix for its SMR projects seems to try and address this specific concern. India’s own range of at least three SMR prototypes that are being designed and developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), a constituent unit of the DAE, include broadly three reactor types.These reactors, apart from the Bharat Small Modular Reactor (BSMR – 200MWe), are the Bharat Small Reactor (220 MWe), and another smaller modular reactor (SMR-55 MWe). Of these, the BSR is a PHWR-based prototype, while both the BSMR and the new 55MWe small reactor are both envisaged as light water reactors (also called pressurised water reactors or PWRs). The Russians are currently building light water reactor-based projects at Kudankulam, the early stages of which are producing electricity and supplying to the grid. A majority of the units that NPCIL currently operates are PHWR-based.Story continues below this adConceptual and detailed designs for these SMR reactors are learnt to be at “an advanced stage”. In view of the available in-house expertise and know-how of technologies being developed, no collaboration has been envisaged, government officials said. It is planned to establish lead units of SMR-55 and BSMR 200 MWe at DAE sites for technology demonstration. These demonstration reactors are likely to be constructed in 60 to 72 months after being accorded project sanctions, officials said.Legislative tweaks to open up N-powerApart from this indigenous effort, India is trying to leverage technology from the US, Russia and other countries that have an early lead on SMR technology and in designing light water reactor projects. Legislative groundwork is currently underway for multiple amendments in the two overarching laws governing the country’s atomic energy sector, which now aim to align these legislations with legal provisions globally, addressing festering investor concerns and setting the stage for an opening up of India’s civil nuclear sector.The Indian government has committed to getting two key legislative amendments passed, including an explicit assurance to this effect made in the union budget presented earlier this year, even though the legislative route for at least one of the two proposed bills would be an arduous one.