How much capital expenditure has the Indian nuclear establishment incurred in the last five years? The figure is not clear as two different numbers have been provided in the Upper and Lower houses of Parliament by Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office.
The PMO has oversight of the Departments of Atomic Energy and Space, and the Prime Minister is the Cabinet Minister for both Atomic Energy and Space.
On July 24, Dr Singh told the Lok Sabha in response to unstarred question No 255: “The total capital expenditure on nuclear power projects under construction during the last five years (2019-20 to 2023-24) was about ₹66,503 crore.”
On August 8, answering unstarred question No 1922 in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister said, “The expenditure (capex) on nuclear power generation from 2019-20 to 2023-24 has been about ₹69,435 crore.” Notably, both replies qualify the numbers with the word “about” but the difference is a whopping ₹2,932 crore.
‘Cavalier manner’
“It shows the cavalier manner in which the PM deals with important Parliament questions,” Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told businessline. Noting that the two different numbers cannot be just rounding-off errors, he said, “These are questions relating to a Department of which he (the Prime Minister) is the Cabinet Minister.”
It is evident from the various responses given by Dr Singh that the nuclear establishment earned ₹74,111 crore from electricity sales in the last five years. Also, the average nuclear energy tariff has increased from ₹3.38 per kWhr in 2019-20 to ₹3.83 in 2023-24. Total power generation increased from 46.47 billion units to 47.97 billion units over the period.
Dr Singh also told the Rajya Sabha that the recommendations of studies projecting India’s need for 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047, in order to meet its ‘net zero by 2070’ target, “are being reviewed for possible future adoption.” India’s insta- lled nuclear power capacity is 8,180 MW. The 100 GW target means increasing the capacity by more than 12 times in 23 years.
In the last four years, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd has set up 1,400 MW of capacity.
The short-term target is to nearly triple the existing capacity in eight years so that India has 22,480 MW of nuclear electricity generation capacity by 2031-32.