India's parliament passed a bill that will open its nuclear industry to private firms, unlocking investment opportunities worth $214 billion following decades of tight regulations that stifled the sector. Bloomberg News' Stephen Stapczynski spoke to Paul Allen on Insight with Haslinda Amin about the government's plan to overhaul liability provisions that previously spooked investors.

New Delhi

India has enacted legislation to open its nuclear industry to private investment, ending a longstanding state monopoly and potentially unlocking projects valued at over $200 billion. The new law also relaxes liability requirements for foreign technology providers, which had previously stalled international collaborations and reactor imports.

The government plans to increase nuclear power capacity eleven-fold by 2047, positioning India for one of the world's largest nuclear expansions after China. While the reforms aim to reduce coal dependence and support economic growth, challenges such as high costs, financing, and local participation remain before large-scale projects can proceed.

India to open nuclear industry to private firms

Lawmakers have passed a bill to open up the country's nuclear industry to private investment that could be worth more than $200 billion. It's part of government efforts to support the economy and wean itself off carbon. For more, let's get back to Stephen Stapchinski, who leads our Asia energy coverage out of Singapore. So, Stephen, can you tell us a little bit more about the details of these law changes and how they're going to alter the current states of nuclear power generation in India? Sure. There's two major pieces of this. One is it gets rid of the decades-old nuclear operating monopoly within India, so it allows other companies to own, operate, build nuclear reactors that allows others to bring money in and to take on those projects. The second thing is it also gets rid of the liability laws or lessens them for the technology providers. So, in 2010, India introduced basically rules that made technology providers, that's like Westinghouse or any company from Europe or China that sells the technology to India, they would be liable in the case of an accident, like a nuclear meltdown or any other operational issue. And that would open them up for litigation and other sorts of penalties. And that held up a lot of import deals between India and foreign suppliers. A lot of projects stalled because of that. And so reducing that liability rule and also essentially opening up the sector, the idea is to pave the way for projects to move forward. Now, of course, there are a lot of questions that remain. These are not cheap projects. These are projects that cost billions of dollars. It requires banks to get on board. It requires towns and companies to get involved. So while this is one of the barriers, there are a number of other things that need to kind of get cleared before we really see projects ramp up. Yes, Stephen, there's only about seven nuclear power plants in India at the moment. I mean, realistically speaking, where are we likely to see those numbers head? And is it going to put a dent in India's carbon footprint? So there are, I guess you can look at it two ways. There is what the government wants to do, which is increased capacity 11-fold through 2047. That's going to cost over $200 billion. And it would be one of the largest builds outs in nuclear power, second only to what China is in the middle of doing at the moment. Now, where do they actually land? That's a big question. I don't have the crystal ball. But I think it is pretty clear that if they are able to drastically increase the amount of nuclear reactors that they have, that is one, every reactor is one less plant that's needed for coal. India is very much dependent on coal. Most of its power mix is generated by coal. And it's very polluting. It is the most polluting fossil fuel. So by increasing, rapidly increasing, if they're able to increase 11-fold by 2047 over the next three, two decades, then you are going to see less of a dependence on that fossil fuel.

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Breakdown