The SHANTI Bill, 2025: The Unmaking Of Nuclear Accountability

The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025 marks a decisive rupture in India’s nuclear history. By repealing the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, the Bill opens India’s civil nuclear sector to private and corporate participation for the first time in over six decades. While the government presents this move as an inevitable modernisation required to achieve 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2047, the Bill fundamentally reorders priorities: public safety, environmental protection, democratic oversight, and energy sovereignty are subordinated to the imperatives of attracting foreign and domestic capital.

This is not merely a policy shift; it is a structural transformation of how nuclear risk, responsibility, and power are distributed in Indian society. SHANTI converts nuclear energy from a strategic public good into a commercial asset governed by market logic, while systematically dismantling the legal, regulatory, and ethical safeguards built—however imperfectly—over decades.

From Strategic Asset to Market Commodity

India’s nuclear programme was conceived under radically different assumptions. Homi Bhabha and Jawaharlal Nehru viewed nuclear technology as too dangerous, too strategic, and too consequential to be entrusted to private profit motives. The Atomic Energy Act, 1962 embodied this philosophy, vesting exclusive control in the State and insulating nuclear development from market pressures.

This framework was not without flaws. Capacity expansion was slow, reaching 8.8 GW across 23 reactors and contributing roughly 3 per cent of electricity generation. Yet the model prioritised strategic autonomy, safety, and public accountability. Nuclear technology was treated as a collective risk requiring collective control.

The SHANTI Bill dismantles this consensus. Introduced on December 16, 2025 and passed by the Lok Sabha the next day despite demands by several Opposition parliamentarians for referring the legislation to a parliamentary panel. The Bill now moves to the Rajya Sabha for discussion following which it can become law. The Bill permits private participation across the entire nuclear value chain — mining of atomic minerals, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, operation, and decommissioning — under government licensing. The stated rationale is rising energy demand and fiscal constraints of the public sector. But this explanation obscures more than it reveals.

The Bill must be understood as a neoliberal restructuring of a strategic sector, driven less by energy necessity than by capital’s long-standing demands. It arrives after years of pressure from foreign nuclear vendors—particularly American and French firms—to dismantle India’s liability regime. SHANTI resolves this impasse by socialising risk, privatising profit, and hollowing out democratic control.

The Liability Question: Erasing Bhopal’s Lessons

The most consequential aspect of SHANTI is its assault on nuclear liability. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 was enacted in the shadow of Bhopal and Fukushima. Bhopal revealed the catastrophic consequences of corporate impunity: Union Carbide settled for a paltry sum, executives escaped accountability, and victims were left with inadequate compensation. The CLND Act sought—however modestly—to internalise these lessons.

Its most significant provision, Section 17(b), granted operators the right of recourse against suppliers in cases of defective equipment or substandard services. This was a direct challenge to the global nuclear industry’s insistence on supplier immunity. Unsurprisingly, foreign vendors refused to proceed with reactor sales unless this clause was neutralised. Despite the Indo–US nuclear deal of 2005, projects stalled for over a decade.

The SHANTI Bill resolves this deadlock by capitulating to corporate demands.

First, supplier liability is eliminated or rendered contractually meaningless. Responsibility is channelled exclusively to operators, even when accidents arise from design flaws or manufacturing defects. Second, operator liability is capped at scandalously low levels—₹3,000 crore for large reactors, ₹1,500 crore for medium ones, and as little as ₹100 crore for small reactors. Third, the government’s liability is capped at approximately ₹3,400 crore, making this the de facto ceiling regardless of actual damage.

These figures are grotesquely inadequate. Fukushima’s costs exceed $200 billion; Chernobyl’s long-term costs run into hundreds of billions. Even Three Mile Island cost $2.4 billion in cleanup. India’s proposed caps would barely fund emergency evacuation, let alone decades of health care, environmental remediation, and livelihood restoration.

The graded liability structure is particularly pernicious in the context of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which the government aggressively promotes. With liability capped at ₹100–300 crore, SMRs enjoy near-immunity while being deployed closer to population centres, multiplying risk under the guise of innovation.

Criminal Liability: A Glaring Silence

Equally disturbing is what the Bill omits. SHANTI is virtually silent on criminal liability for negligence, falsification of safety data, suppression of incident reports, or sabotage. In a sector where catastrophic harm is foreseeable, the absence of explicit criminal accountability is not accidental—it reflects a deliberate choice to shield corporate actors from prosecution.

This silence repeats the Bhopal pattern, where civil compensation substituted for criminal justice. By reducing nuclear accidents to actuarial events rather than criminal failures, the Bill normalizes impunity. It signals to operators and suppliers alike that even gross negligence will be treated as a manageable cost of business.

The dilution of liability raises profound constitutional concerns. Article 21 jurisprudence imposes a positive obligation on the state to protect life and health from environmental hazards. By legally capping compensation far below foreseeable harm, the state effectively licenses catastrophic risk.

The “polluter pays” principle—reaffirmed in a long line of environmental judgments—rests on the premise that those who create risk must bear its full social cost. SHANTI eviscerates this principle by insulating suppliers and capping operator liability, thereby shifting the burden of nuclear harm onto victims and the public exchequer. Nuclear accidents are no longer treated as constitutional catastrophes demanding full redress, but as legally containable events governed by investment-friendly ceilings.

This inversion of priorities marks a profound normative shift.

Regulatory Capture Institutionalized

Proponents claim that granting statutory status to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) strengthens oversight. In reality, the reform is cosmetic. Appointments remain under executive control; there is no parliamentary confirmation or independent selection mechanism. AERB’s mandate is confined to technical safety, excluding socio-economic impact, environmental justice, or public participation.

Crucially, the Centre retains sweeping powers to override regulatory determinations whenever it “considers necessary.” The Department of Atomic Energy continues to control policy, licensing, and expansion while the regulator remains institutionally subordinate. This violates international best practice, which demands strict separation between promoter and regulator.

SHANTI thus entrenches regulatory capture by design. The same executive pushing rapid expansion controls the institutions meant to restrain it.

Waste, Decommissioning, and Intergenerational Burdens

One of the most striking omissions in SHANTI concerns radioactive waste and decommissioning. The Bill provides no clear allocation of responsibility or funding mechanism for long-term waste management, spent fuel storage, or plant decommissioning—costs that routinely exceed construction expenses.

Globally, decommissioning costs have bankrupted operators and forced governments to intervene. By opening nuclear operations to private entities without mandating fully funded decommissioning trusts, SHANTI risks transferring these enormous liabilities to future generations. Nuclear waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years, yet the Bill offers no credible institutional architecture for managing this burden.

Insurance Fiction and Financial Fragility

The liability caps mask a deeper problem: India lacks an insurance market capable of underwriting nuclear risk at meaningful levels. Nuclear insurance pools are inherently inadequate for catastrophic events. SHANTI’s solution is not to address this impossibility but to legislate it away by lowering liability.

This is financial sleight of hand. It creates the illusion of insurability while ensuring that the state—and ultimately citizens—bear the costs when insurance inevitably fails.

Labour Risk, National Security and Sabotage Risks

Privatization will also transform labour relations in the nuclear sector. Private operators will inevitably rely on contract labour for maintenance, construction, and waste handling, replicating patterns seen in thermal power, chemicals, and mining. Contract workers are routinely exposed to higher radiation risks with weaker protections, minimal health monitoring, and limited legal recourse.

SHANTI is silent on labour safety standards, occupational disease compensation, and long-term health surveillance. Nuclear risk is thus redistributed downward, borne disproportionately by precarious workers rather than corporations.

Opening the nuclear sector to private and foreign participation also raises national security concerns that the Bill barely acknowledges. Nuclear facilities are high-value targets for sabotage, cyber-attacks, and espionage. Privatization fragments control, increases points of vulnerability, and complicates intelligence oversight.

Foreign minority ownership may appear limited on paper, but technical dependence grants disproportionate influence. Security failures in privately operated critical infrastructure elsewhere—from power grids to ports—offer sobering lessons.

Abandonment of Self-Reliance

The Bill permits up to 49 percent Foreign Direct Investment in nuclear power generation. While framed as enabling technology transfer, this deepens technological dependence. India’s indigenous three-stage programme and thorium cycle represented genuine energy sovereignty. Imported light-water reactors reverse this trajectory.

Turnkey projects do not transfer design knowledge. Instead, they lock India into vendor-specific technologies, fuel supply chains, maintenance contracts, and licensing fees. Minority foreign ownership masks decisive control exercised through technical complexity and proprietary systems.

Energy sovereignty is exchanged for investor confidence.

The nuclear push must be evaluated against alternatives. India’s renewable potential exceeds 2,000 GW. Solar and wind, coupled with storage, are now cost-competitive, faster to deploy, and free from catastrophic risk, long-term waste, and liability dilemmas.

Every rupee committed to nuclear expansion under SHANTI is a rupee not invested in grid modernization, decentralized generation, storage, or energy efficiency. Nuclear power is not a climate inevitability but a political choice favouring capital-intensive, centralized infrastructure.

Democratic Deficit and Environmental Injustice

SHANTI was railroaded through Parliament with minimal debate and no Standing Committee scrutiny. Consultation occurred with foreign corporations, not affected communities, environmental experts, or civil society.

Nuclear siting disproportionately burdens rural and politically marginalized populations, as seen in Kudankulam, Jaitapur, and Kovvada. Public hearings have become procedural rituals designed to exhaust opposition rather than engage it. There is no provision for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent—the right to say no.

Conclusion: A Faustian Bargain

The SHANTI Bill represents a profoundly asymmetric exchange. India relinquishes nuclear liability protections, regulatory independence, labour safety, environmental safeguards, energy sovereignty, and democratic accountability in return for uncertain capital inflows and speculative capacity targets.

Foreign corporations gain immunity, market access, and guaranteed returns. Citizens inherit capped compensation, concentrated risks, intergenerational waste burdens, and diminished rights. Nuclear energy is transformed from a strategic public good into a site of private accumulation with socialized catastrophe.

True reform would strengthen liability, impose criminal accountability, preserve public control, invest in indigenous research and renewables, and democratize energy governance. SHANTI offers the opposite: a regression masked as reform, a capitulation dressed as modernization. It is a Faustian bargain whose costs will be borne not by investors, but by generations of Indians.

(Views expressed are personal)

Anand Teltumbde is an Indian scholar, writer and human rights activist.