A detailed representation has been sent to Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, with a copy marked to the Prime Minister, urging the Union government not to extend fiscal incentives, tax concessions or policy preferences to nuclear power in the forthcoming Union Budget 2026.
The letter, written by power and climate policy analyst Shankar Sharma from Sagara in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, responds to recent media reports indicating that the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has sought a range of budgetary sops to place nuclear power on par with renewable energy, including GST exemptions for ongoing and upcoming nuclear projects, access to green financing, eligibility for renewable purchase obligations, inclusion in the national green taxonomy, and removal of nuclear projects from the Central Pollution Control Board’s ‘Red’ category.
Citing these reports, including one published in The Economic Times, Sharma argues that treating nuclear power as equivalent to renewable energy would be conceptually flawed and economically unsound. He contends that nuclear energy is neither renewable nor relevant to India’s long-term energy future, especially when assessed against economic, environmental, technical and social criteria. He notes that despite massive public subsidies and policy support since Independence, nuclear power contributes only about 1.8 per cent of India’s total electricity generation capacity, a figure that has struggled to cross 2 per cent for decades.
The representation marshals a wide range of international studies and official reports to argue that nuclear power is consistently the costliest source of electricity generation. Sharma refers to the US Energy Information Administration’s 2016 capital cost estimates, which show advanced nuclear plants to be more expensive than any other major technology, as well as a comparative study by Lappeenranta University of Technology and Germany’s Energy Watch Group that found nuclear power to have the highest life-cycle costs among major technologies as of 2017, with solar and wind being the cheapest. He also cites Lazard’s 2025 Levelized Cost of Energy report, which places new nuclear power in the US at roughly $140 to $220 per megawatt-hour, far above the costs of unsubsidised solar and wind, along with Australian and Stanford University studies that rank renewable energy sources far more favourably than nuclear power in terms of cost, environmental impact and overall sustainability.
Contrasting nuclear power with India’s renewable energy trajectory, Sharma points out that non-hydro renewable sources already account for about 48 per cent of India’s installed electricity generation capacity, achieved in less than two decades, while nuclear power remains marginal even after more than five decades of state support. He notes that renewable capacity, particularly solar and wind, is projected to exceed 300,000 MW by 2030, compared to the current nuclear capacity of about 6,780 MW, underscoring where India’s real energy momentum lies.
The letter further argues that global experience and India’s own ecological and demographic realities make nuclear power particularly unsuitable. Sharma highlights the large land and freshwater requirements of nuclear plants, long construction periods, and the potentially catastrophic consequences of accidents, all of which, he argues, impose disproportionate risks on vulnerable communities. He maintains that nuclear energy is among the least people-friendly and least environmentally benign options available, especially in a country already facing acute stress on land, forests, water resources and overall environmental health.
Sharma strongly critiques the renewed push by the nuclear establishment for small modular reactors (SMRs), describing them as another unproven technological promise that fails to address fundamental concerns. He argues that SMRs are likely to be more expensive per unit of electricity generated than large reactors, produce less electricity per megawatt of installed capacity, and still carry the inherent risks of severe accidents, radioactive waste generation and nuclear proliferation. Quoting nuclear expert Dr M V Ramana, he emphasises that all nuclear reactors, regardless of size, remain hazardous by design and can cause widespread radioactive contamination in the event of an accident. He also warns that widespread deployment of SMRs would mean many more nuclear sites across the country, exposing a far larger number of communities to radiation-related risks.
The representation stresses that credible cost projections, including those by Lazard, consistently show nuclear power, including SMRs, to be far more expensive over their life cycles than solar and wind energy. In the Indian context, Sharma argues, continuing to allocate scarce public resources to nuclear power without transparent and credible cost-benefit comparisons amounts to a breach of public trust.
Sharma concludes that nuclear power is not only economically burdensome but also largely irrelevant to addressing climate change, given its negligible contribution to India’s power mix and the availability of cheaper, cleaner and faster-to-deploy alternatives. He cautions that subsidising nuclear power would amount to “throwing good money after bad,” while diverting resources away from genuinely beneficial technologies such as solar and wind. He urges the Finance Ministry to demand clear answers from the nuclear establishment on a wide range of unresolved issues, including competitiveness, safety, waste disposal, intergenerational costs, vulnerability to terrorism, and overall social costs versus benefits.
The letter argues that encouraging nuclear power through subsidies and policy preferences would amount to a grave injustice, involving the diversion of forest and agricultural land, massive freshwater use and long-term environmental and social liabilities, despite the availability of benign and less risky alternatives. Sharma offers to make a detailed presentation to the Ministry if required, noting his more than 45 years of professional experience in the power sector in India, New Zealand and Australia.
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