India’s Vedanta Group, led by billionaire Anil Agarwal, is inviting expressions of interest to construct 5,000 MWe of nuclear power capacity in India to meet the energy needs at its facilities. Vedanta said it is “looking for a globally recognised company with a proven track record of designing, building and operating nuclear plants to deliver and end-to-end turnkey project”.
It added that “all the local permits and regulatory approvals, land, battery limit utilities and infrastructure support will be provided by Vedanta”.
Vedanta is a global natural resources and technology conglomerate operating across India, South Africa, Liberia and Namibia with interests in oil & gas, zinc-lead-silver, aluminium, iron ore, steel, copper, ferro alloys, power, nickel, semiconductor and glass. energy.
Vedanta’s current energy portfolio includes 9,000 MW of thermal and 4,000 MW of renewables under construction. It is aiming to expand the capacity to 20,000 MW in the next three years.
This comes after the federal budget revealed plans to have 100 GWe of nuclear power generation capacity installed by 2047, “positioning nuclear energy as a major pillar in India’s energy mix”. Currently, India has 8 GWe of operating nuclear capacity, operated by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). The budget also announced measures to promote private sector participation, and accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Recently, India’s biggest power company state-run NTPC (formerly the National Thermal Power Corporation revealed plans to invest $62bn over the next two decades to construct 30 GWe of nuclear generation capacity, according to Reuters.
Other private companies that have expressed interest in developing nuclear power include Naveen Jindal Group, which has launched a wholly owned subsidiary, Jindal Nuclear Power, with plans to deploy up to 18 GW of nuclear.
India’s Tata Power Co says it is looking for opportunities in the small modular reactors space, following the government’s nuclear expansion plans. “As the Government is looking for active partnerships with private players and the amendment to the Nuclear Power Act to set up nuclear energy capacity, we will take up the opportunities to set up small modular nuclear reactors,” Tata Power said in a filing with the Indian stock exchange earlier in February.
In December, Tata Power’s sister company in the US signed a letter of intent with BWX Technologies exploring the deployment of eight microreactors at a Tata-owned Wyoming mining facility. India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is collaborating with Tata Consulting Engineers to redesign indigenously developed 220 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) as Bharat small modular reactors (SMRs).
