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NEW DELHI: Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal met with Bernard Fontana, Chairman and CEO of France’s state-owned energy giant Électricité de France, on September 25, 2026 in New Delhi for a high-level review of India’s civil nuclear cooperation with France, centred on EDF’s European Pressurised Reactor technology. The Indian delegation included senior representatives from the Ministry of Power, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Central Electricity Authority, NTPC and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, while the French side included EDF executives and officials from the French Embassy.
According to the official readout from the Ministry of Power, discussions covered four areas: deploying EPR reactor technology in India, building a domestic manufacturing supply chain for nuclear components, aligning with India’s newly drafted SHANTI nuclear regulations, and clean energy cooperation on pumped-hydro storage through a proposed NTPC-EDF joint venture. Notably, no binding contracts, site allocations, unit counts or financing timelines emerged from the meeting. This was, by every available account, an executive review of ongoing dialogue rather than a deal-closing event.
A Reactor Finally Proven, After Years of Delay
The EPR itself is a Generation III+ pressurised water reactor designed by Framatome and EDF, capable of delivering roughly 1,650 MWe net output per unit with extensive passive safety features, including four independent safety trains and a dedicated core catcher designed to contain molten reactor material in a worst-case accident. The technology reached a genuine milestone this year: France’s long-delayed Flamanville 3 unit finally entered commercial operation on May 5, 2026, after a construction process that itself illustrates how difficult and slow EPR projects can be to bring to completion.
India’s history with this reactor design goes back to 2009, when NPCIL signed an initial memorandum of understanding with French vendor Areva for six EPR units at the proposed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in Maharashtra. After Areva’s restructuring folded its reactor business into EDF, the two sides signed a revised agreement in 2016, witnessed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then-French President Emmanuel Macron. By 2020, EDF had submitted a binding techno-commercial offer for six units totalling 9,900 MWe. Yet despite this trail of agreements stretching back seventeen years, Jaitapur has not moved to construction, held back by tariff viability concerns, supplier liability disputes, financing complexity, and the difficulty of justifying domestic manufacturing investment without a confirmed multi-reactor order.
What Actually Changed This Year
The most consequential shift since those earlier talks is legal rather than technical. India’s SHANTI Act, passed in December 2025, repealed both the 1962 Atomic Energy Act and the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, replacing them with a framework that permits private and joint-venture ownership of nuclear plants, caps foreign investment in project vehicles at 49%, and grants the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board full statutory independence. Crucially, the Act removes the controversial statutory supplier liability that previously existed under Section 17(b) of the old liability law, a provision that had long deterred foreign reactor vendors from committing to Indian projects. Supplier liability now flows only through negotiated commercial contracts, while operators face graded liability caps depending on plant size, up to ₹3,000 crore for the largest facilities, with total incident liability capped near ₹3,900 crore and backed by a state-managed Nuclear Liability Fund.
The Department of Atomic Energy has since placed draft rules implementing this Act in the public domain for consultation, and it was this regulatory alignment, more than any project-specific announcement, that appears to have shaped this week’s meeting.
Why Pumped-Hydro Storage Was on the Same Agenda
The inclusion of pumped-hydro storage alongside nuclear talks reflects a fairly straightforward grid engineering logic. Nuclear plants operate best as steady, continuous baseload generators, since frequent power adjustments accelerate wear on reactor components. Pumped-hydro storage, by contrast, can ramp output up or down within minutes, pumping water uphill during periods of surplus solar or wind generation and releasing it through turbines when demand peaks. Combining the two creates a more balanced grid capable of absorbing India’s rapidly growing renewable capacity. This cooperation builds on a non-binding memorandum NTPC signed with EDF in April 2026 to jointly evaluate pumped-hydro projects, aligning with the government’s broader target of 100 GW of pumped-hydro storage capacity by 2047.
The Gap Between Policy Signal and Bankable Project
Even with the legal reforms in place, EDF itself flagged the central remaining obstacle during the meeting: achieving genuine domestic manufacturing localisation requires a committed, multi-reactor build programme large enough to justify the capital investment Indian suppliers would need to make. Without that volume commitment, and without concessional financing structures, imported light water reactor tariffs risk remaining uncompetitive against India’s own 700 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors or solar-storage hybrids. Removing statutory supplier liability also shifts risk allocation entirely into contract negotiations between operators and vendors, covering delay penalties, performance guarantees and defect remedies, none of which have reportedly been settled yet for any EPR project in India.
What Would Actually Signal Progress
Several markers would indicate this dialogue is moving toward something concrete: the Department of Atomic Energy formally notifying final SHANTI Rules after incorporating public feedback, the AERB publishing design certification standards for foreign reactor technology, corporate disclosures detailing the structure of the proposed NTPC-EDF joint venture, and eventually, binding intergovernmental agreements or engineering contracts specifying supply scopes and localisation schedules. Until such steps materialise, this week’s meeting stands as exactly what its official readout describes: a continuation of dialogue between two governments that have been discussing the same reactor technology, in various forms, for the better part of two decades.
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