India should secure supply chains for nuclear fuel, says MEA special secretary
New Delhi: As India looks to achieve energy security amid growing demand, Periasamy Kumaran, special secretary at the external affairs ministry said India should secure supply chains for nuclear fuel and develop indigenous technologies to increase the share of nuclear power in its energy mix.
Speaking at the CII Energy Security Conference in New Delhi on Tuesday, Kumaran noted that India’s energy transition has drawn the country into global supply chains of solar modules, wind-turbines, critical minerals and semiconductors, and that control over these resources could cause geopolitical tensions and give rise to new coalitions.
The Indian government is looking to increase India’s nuclear power capacity from 7 GW at present to 22 GW by 2032 and has identified 18 potential sites to set up nuclear power plants. It hopes nuclear power will play a key role in helping the country achieve its target of 500 GW of non-fossil-fuel energy by 2030.
Coal is king
“Coal is the backbone of our power generation, accounting for 17% of energy production, and is seen as an affordable and viable source of energy. With substantial coal reserves, India uses coal to buffer its energy security, especially during periods of high demand and shortages,” Kumaran said.
Pallavi Jain Govil, director general of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said at the conference that oil and gas exploration is set to begin in the Andaman Basin, with hopes of a major discovery. “We are hoping that the exploration in the Andaman basin will turn out to be the new Mumbai High for us,” she said.
Govil underscored the importance of high-quality geological data to attract investments, and announced efforts to move India’s National Data Repository (NDR) to the cloud to improve data accessibility and sharing.
Virendra Gupta, co-chairman of the CII Core Group on Energy Security and president of the Indian Council for International Cooperation, said India has been diversifying its sources of oil beyond West Asia to other regions, including Africa.
“At one point, acquiring energy assets abroad was equated with energy security. But that may not be the case, for instance, in a war. Even if you own an energy asset, shipping it to India can be difficult. At the most, it insulates against price shocks,” he said.
