SHANTI And The Paradox Of Peace In Nuclear Law [Part-II]

[This article is the concluding part of a two-piece examination of the SHANTI Act. Part I analysed the law through the lens of liability, justice delivery, institutional trust and the legacy of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. Part II turns to the material realities that shape nuclear policy regardless of ownership—capital costs, timelines, international safeguards, fuel geopolitics and climate imperatives—to assess the limits within which legislative choices must operate.]

After SHANTI: What the Hard Realities of Nuclear Power Tell Us

Why costs, timelines, safeguards and geopolitics complicate the debate beyond liability and trust

The first phase of the debate on the SHANTI Act focused on liability, institutional trust and justice delivery. Those concerns go to the moral core of nuclear governance and cannot be wished away. Yet a concluding assessment must also engage with a second layer of reality: the material and geopolitical constraints that shape nuclear power regardless of who owns or operates a plant. These constraints do not dissolve the anxieties identified earlier, but they do narrow the range of plausible policy choices.

Time as a structural safeguard

In the same way as the hard economics of operating a nuclear facility could be an impeding factor, equally constraining is time. A nuclear plant typically requires a decade to fifteen years from conception to commercial operation. Site identification, environmental clearances, safety approvals, international coordination, construction, commissioning and phased testing unfold slowly and sequentially.

This long gestation period has two consequences. First, it insulates the sector from short-term political or commercial opportunism. Second, it locks projects into policy continuity across electoral cycles. Any private participation enabled by the SHANTI Act will therefore be tested not by immediate outcomes, but by regulatory consistency over many years.

Time, in this sense, functions as an unintended but real safeguard.

Safety oversight is not optional or domestic alone

Nuclear safety is not governed solely by national discretion. It operates within a multi-layered oversight architecture that combines domestic regulation with international safeguards.

At the national level, safety audits are continuous rather than episodic. Licensing occurs at every stage—design, construction, commissioning and operation. Audits examine reactor integrity, radiation protection, emergency preparedness, fuel handling and waste management. These are technical evaluations embedded into plant life cycles, not post-hoc inspections.

Alongside this runs an international discipline. Civil nuclear facilities using imported fuel are subject to binding safeguards agreements that require material accounting, surveillance and verification. Openness to inspection is not a concession; it is the price of access to global nuclear commerce. Facilities must maintain a Physical Inventory Listing. If India imports 100 tones, the IAEA expects to see exactly 100 tons accounted for- either in storage, inside the reactor core, or in the spent fuel. This external visibility sharply limits discretion, regardless of ownership structure. Further, since India is a “nuclear-armed state” outside the NPT, it operates under a “separation plan” that divides its nuclear facilities into Civilian (subject to international monitoring) and Military (non-monitored. Any uranium imported from abroad must be used in the civilian sector.

Fuel supply: stable, but never apolitical

Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear fuel constitutes a relatively small portion of generation cost once a plant is operational. Uranium typically accounts for around a tenth of total production cost, with capital expenditure dominating the economics. India sources uranium through long-term contracts from multiple countries, structured for predictability rather than spot-market volatility.

These arrangements are generally robust, supported by multi-year inventories that cushion short-term disruption. Yet uranium is not immune to geopolitics. Supply contracts are embedded within diplomatic relationships, and long-term leverage—rather than sudden stoppage—is the more realistic vulnerability.

The implication is not fragility, but structural dependence. Nuclear energy reduces exposure to fossil fuel volatility while introducing a different, more regulated form of geopolitical interdependence.

Waste, recycling and audit discipline

Public anxiety about nuclear waste often conflates fear with uncertainty. In practice, waste management is among the most closely regulated aspects of nuclear operations. India follows a closed fuel cycle, reprocessing spent fuel to extract usable material and reduce waste volume. Facilities involved in reprocessing and storage operate under stringent licensing conditions.

Audits in this domain focus on containment integrity, radiation monitoring, transport protocols and environmental impact. Where imported fuel is involved, waste accounting is also subject to international verification. These processes do not eliminate risk, but they do constrain it through layered monitoring and enforceable standards.

Every country that sells uranium to India signs a bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (NCA) that (i) secures strict guarantees that fuel will only be used for power generation; (ii) imposes embargo on sale or transfer of imported uranium to a third country without the supplier's consent and (iii) restricts reprocessing of spent fuel from imported uranium to extract plutonium without specific bilateral permissions and IAEA oversight.

Climate arithmetic and the limits of choice

The environmental argument for nuclear power is not ideological; it is arithmetic. Fossil fuels are finite and carbon intensive. Renewables, while indispensable, remain intermittent and storage-dependent. Nuclear power offers low-carbon baseload generation over long horizons.

This does not render it environmentally benign. Accident risk, waste disposal and inter-generational responsibility remain unresolved challenges. But in the context of climate commitments and fossil fuel depletion, nuclear energy occupies a strategic middle ground that many states find difficult to abandon.

What this means for the SHANTI Act

Taken together, these realities suggest a narrower policy corridor than public debate sometimes acknowledges. Private participation is constrained by economics, time and international oversight even before domestic law intervenes. The SHANTI Act does not create these conditions; it operates within them.

This does not neutralise the concerns raised in the first part of the analysis. On the contrary, it sharpens them. When capital is large, timelines long and geopolitics unavoidable, the quality of institutions becomes decisive. Weak regulation, delayed justice or opaque governance matter more in nuclear power than in almost any other sector.

A concluding note

Nuclear energy is governed as much by physics and finance as by law. Its costs discourage adventurism, its timelines punish impatience and its international supervision limits autonomy. These features explain why private participation, once introduced, cannot be easily undone—and why it must be governed rather than denied.

The SHANTI Act therefore marks not a conclusion, but a point of reckoning. If India chooses to proceed with nuclear expansion under mixed ownership, the question is no longer whether the risks exist, but whether institutions are strong enough to live with them.

Peace in nuclear policy will not come from optimism or resistance alone. It will come from the unglamorous work of regulation, transparency and accountability sustained over decades. Without that, Shanti will remain a name—and not yet a condition.

GIST | In Short

• Nuclear power's high cost and long timelines inherently deter speculative or fly-by-night operators.

• Safety, fuel use and waste are governed by continuous domestic and international oversight.

• Uranium supply is stable but geopolitically embedded, with capital costs dominating economics.

• With private participation likely, institutional strength—not ownership—is the decisive safeguard.

Views Are Personal.

Author is a Former Judge of High Court of Punjab And Haryana.