India’s civil nuclear programme is getting an important boost from a development with Uzbekistan, as New Delhi moves towards a long-term arrangement for uranium supplies from one of the world’s major producers. This is the second major deal for uranium that India has sealed in less than two months – the earlier one being with Australia in July during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit.
The timing matters. India is planning a major expansion of nuclear power, with an ambition to take installed capacity from around 8.8 GW today to 100 GW by 2047. That expansion will need new reactors, investment and technology, but it will also need something far more basic: a dependable supply of nuclear fuel.
Uzbekistan is well placed to become an important part of that supply chain. It produced around 4,000 tonnes of uranium in 2024, putting it among the world’s leading uranium producers. Its uranium resources are also significant. World Nuclear Association data based on the 2024 Red Book puts Uzbekistan’s reasonably assured recoverable resources at around 40,200 tonnes, with another 49,220 tonnes classified as inferred recoverable resources. Separately, Uzbekistan’s state uranium company Navoiyuran has announced JORC-compliant reserves of 96,600 tonnes.
For India, the importance of the arrangement is not only the quantity of uranium involved. It is also about diversification. As the country prepares to build a much larger nuclear fleet, having long-term relationships with several uranium-producing countries reduces the risk of relying too heavily on any one source.
Another major development unfolded in parallel, this time with Australia, less than two months ago.
For more than a decade, India had a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Australia, but the arrangement remained incomplete because uranium supplies had not actually begun. Australia had been reluctant to operationalise exports to India, despite the two countries signing a nuclear cooperation agreement in 2014.
That has now changed.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia in July, the two countries moved to operationalise long-term uranium cooperation, with Australian uranium to be supplied to India for peaceful purposes and subject to international safeguards.
The significance of Australia is obvious when the size of its uranium reserves is considered. Australia has one of the largest uranium resource bases in the world.
World Nuclear Association figures put its identified recoverable uranium resources at around 1.67 million tonnes under the $130/kgU benchmark, roughly 28 per cent of the world total. Australian government figures, using a broader classification, put its uranium resources at around 1.96 million tonnes in 2024. Australia is also a major producer, with output of around 4,600 tonnes in 2024. The Australian agreement is particularly noteworthy because of how different Canberra’s position is today from where it stood in the past. In 2010, Australia had refused to sell uranium to India, citing its policy of supplying countries that were party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India remains outside the NPT. A major change came in December 2025 with the passage of the SHANTI Act, which overhauled India’s civil nuclear framework and opened the door to greater private-sector participation under a regulated licensing system. The legislation also changed aspects of the country’s nuclear liability framework.
That reform is important because the scale of India’s nuclear ambition is much greater than the programme India has today.
Going from 8.8 GW to 100 GW by 2047 means increasing nuclear capacity more than eleven-fold. That cannot be done simply by expanding existing public-sector projects. India will need private investment, foreign technology, new reactor designs, manufacturing capacity and a much larger nuclear supply chain.
And all of those reactors will ultimately need fuel.
This is why the uranium arrangements with Uzbekistan and Australia matter. They are coming at the beginning of what India hopes will be a very significant expansion of nuclear power.
The two countries also bring different advantages. Uzbekistan is already a major uranium producer and gives India another source in Central Asia. Australia has an enormous resource base and is a major strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific.
For years, India’s civil nuclear programme faced a combination of fuel shortages, limited international access, restrictions on investment and a tightly controlled domestic framework. Some of those constraints have now begun to ease.
Source: News18