Parliamentary scrutiny has brought renewed urgency to India’s nuclear fuel supply chain. A committee has recommended sweeping regulatory reforms for uranium mining, emphasising the need for faster approvals and more predictable processes to ensure reliable fuel for the country’s Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor fleet.

The recommendations are contained in the panel’s report on regulatory enablement for strategic minerals. The government has submitted interim replies, but its final response is still awaited.

The committee highlighted that newly identified or deeper ore bodies often extend beyond existing lease boundaries. Current provisions under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act do not permit seamless lease-area extensions, forcing fresh leases and separate clearances. This undermines the techno-economic viability of projects, particularly for deposits at depths beyond 600 metres, such as those at Narwapahar.

The panel noted that the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd must secure approvals from multiple agencies, including the Ministries of Environment and Forests, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the Directorate General of Mines Safety, the Pollution Control Board, as well as land and water permissions. Projects also face social licence requirements and site-specific challenges such as tailings disposal and water availability.

These multi-agency approval pathways can extend project timelines, with implications for fuel supply planning for reactors.

To address this, the panel recommended amending MMDR provisions to allow contiguous lease extensions for strategic minerals like uranium when ore bodies extend beyond boundaries, subject to strict safety and environmental safeguards.

It also proposed operationalising a single-window clearance mechanism with statutory timelines for uranium mining and milling projects. This would integrate Central and State approvals and enable parallel processing of permissions.

Further, the committee suggested a State-level framework covering land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement of project-affected persons, assured industrial water supply, and off-site emergency planning.

A coordination platform chaired by the Department of Atomic Energy was also recommended to resolve inter-ministerial bottlenecks within defined service-level agreements.

According to the panel, these reforms would compress the permit-to-production cycle and improve UCIL’s reliability in supplying uranium to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.

The Ministry has submitted interim replies, but final action on amending MMDR provisions, establishing the single-window clearance mechanism, and creating the DAE-led coordination platform is still awaited.

With India expanding its nuclear power capacity, the committee stressed that greater regulatory predictability is essential to de-risk uranium production and ensure the long-term fuel requirements of the country’s domestic nuclear reactor program are met.

Agencies