Government is targeting to triple the country’s current nuclear power generation capacity over the next 10 years to meet the growing needs. Union Minister Jitendra Singh has said that the government aims to increase the capacity for power generation by three times in ten years without compromising on safety of people and it would also ensure that power from this source is affordable.
Jitendra Singh pointed that, while earlier five-year plan targets were set with regard to electricity generation from nuclear power plants, but now the concept of five-year plans has lost relevance with the establishment of Niti Aayog and the government proposes to make long term plans ranging from 7-15 years.
Regarding the nuclear power programme, he said that the government is considering setting up new nuclear power plants in areas not covered before like Bihar, Haryana and Punjab to ramp up nuclear energy production in a big way. Singh also said that the three stage nuclear power programme has been frame to efficiently utilise the large reserve of thorium in the country but the technology is still not tested and tried. India at present has a nuclear power capacity of about 6,000 MW and it had target of 14,580 MW by 2020-21.