NTPC plans to work on nuclear power expansion on a large scale

Business: The country’s largest power company NTPC is planning to take a big step into nuclear power generation and plans to form NTPC Nuclear Energy Company, which will be a 100% subsidiary of NTPC and is exploring sites in several states to set up nuclear units. NTPC is stepping into the nuclear power sector at a time when it is working towards a carbon-neutral economy and an integrated energy spectrum with low-emission thermal power generation at the centre, encompassing renewable energy, nuclear power, green hydrogen and chemicals, green mobility, energy storage and waste-to-energy initiatives. NTPC’s first nuclear power project in a joint venture with Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) at Mahi in Banswara, Rajasthan is likely to come up in the next two months. The project cost of this 2.8 gigawatt (GW) capacity plant is expected to be Rs 50,000 crore. “We have already decided to form NTPC Nuclear Power Company, which will be a 100% subsidiary of NTPC. And we are waiting for different sites in different states. And we would like to replicate the kind of success that our team has been able to demonstrate in case of thermal; Similar breakthroughs are also on the cards in nuclear, which will provide base load power in the coming decades,” NTPC CMD Gurdeep Singh told investors during a Q1FY25 earnings call in late July.

NTPC is also exploring small modular reactor nuclear technology,

which was mentioned in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are gaining traction globally as low-cost clean energy sources of energy. Their power capacities range from 30 MW to 300 MW and components, systems and structures can be manufactured in the factory before being transported as modules to sites for installation. After Rajasthan, the power producer is in talks with Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Karnataka to set up thermal power units. Explaining the company’s nuclear expansion plans, Singh said: “It will not be 2 GW or 5 GW, but it will be tens of GW. It cannot be limited to this. And this will be a one-time investment and again, it will be regulated and cost-plus.”