India is the second largest populated nation in the world and no doubt this means that the energy requirements must be huge as well. This white paper tells us that the per capita energy consumption is nearly 40 times lesser than highly developed economies such as the USA and Canada, still the immense population means that even this small per capita consumption aggregates into a big figure.
Yet as of now only around 2.5% of the total electricity consumption of the country comes from nuclear power plants. Of course there are several reasons for the slow development of nuclear power plants such as the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to which India is not a signatory till date and it hampers the development of civil nuclear programs due to restrictions on trade of nuclear materials. Of course the dwindling fossil fuel supplies will surely force the country to think about alternative arrangements in which nuclear power will certainly play a major role.
Currently there are 17 nuclear power plants in India out of which 15 are small sized and 2 are mid-sized. Six more plants are under construction and they include a fast breeder reactor as well. If you want to know more about the location, type and capacity of each of these existing as well as proposed nuclear power plants, just click here.
