The Uranium rush: Inside India's scramble to fuel its nuclear ambitions

NewsIndia NewsThe Uranium rush: Inside India's scramble to fuel its nuclear ambitions The Uranium rush: Inside India's scramble to fuel its nuclear ambitions Yashasvi Vasistha / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Sep 13, 2026, 19:54 IST India is securing uranium fuel for its ambitious nuclear expansion plans (AI Image) Last month, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Tashkent, the headline takeaway was diplomatic.

India and Uzbekistan agreed to elevate their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and set a target of $5 billion in annual bilateral trade by 2030.But tucked into the joint statement was a line that could matter far more to India’s power planners than the trade target: the two countries agreed to work towards a long-term framework for uranium supplies.PM Modi had told delegates in Tashkent that India would "establish a long-term arrangement for the supply of uranium", describing it as the next step in the two countries&#x27; energy cooperation.It is easy to overlook why a single line on uranium in a joint statement matters.But it is perhaps the clearest sign yet of a scramble that has been building quietly across three continents, from Central Asia to Australia and North America, as India moves to secure the fuel needed for what could become one of the most ambitious nuclear expansion programmes of this century.India’s nuclear math Currently, the country operates 24 nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about 8.78 gigawatts (GW).<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined Centre&#x27;s Nuclear Energy Mission, announced in the Union Budget for 2025-26, sets a target of 100 GW by 2047, more than an eleven-fold jump, with an intermediate goal of roughly 22 GW by 2031-32.

That target, however, comes with a fuel problem.Industry estimates suggest a 100-GW fleet would require somewhere in the range of 18,000 to 20,000 tonnes of natural uranium a year, roughly a third of current global mine production.India&#x27;s own uranium reserves, concentrated in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya, are comparatively thin and have historically constrained, not enabled, the country&#x27;s civil nuclear programme.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined For decades, that shortfall was managed quietly through a handful of government-to-government contracts.Now, with the expansion target locked in, it has become the organising logic behind a wave of overlapping diplomatic and commercial deals, of which the Uzbekistan framework is only the latest.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined India&#x27;s relationship with Uzbekistan on uranium is not new.

The two countries signed a contract back in January 2019 under which Uzbekistan&#x27;s state-owned Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company agreed to supply 1,100 metric tonnes of natural uranium concentrate to India through 2026.Parliamentary records show India had received about 600 metric tonnes of that contracted volume as of March 2025, meaning the current arrangement was always going to need renewing, with expiry or no expiry.What changed in Tashkent was the structure.Rather than negotiate a one-off follow-on contract, the two sides are now working toward a long-term arrangement meant to outlast the transactional cycle of the 2019 deal.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined Siby George, secretary (west) in the ministry of external affairs, was quoted by news agency PTI as saying that "positive discussions have happened" on a long-term uranium supply arrangement, and that the two governments were "closing in" on signing it.No new uranium-specific pact was among the eleven agreements formally signed during the visit, the framework itself is still being finalised, but both governments used the summit to signal that Uzbekistan, one of the world&#x27;s largest uranium producers, will remain a fixture of India&#x27;s fuel-security plan rather than a legacy supplier being phased out.Australia and Canada too on India’s nuclear framework Earlier in July, India finalised the Administrative Arrangement with Australia under their 2014 Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined The arrangement, sealed at the Third India-Australia Annual Summit in Melbourne, operationalises a pact that paves the way for long-term Australian uranium exports to India under IAEA safeguards.Australia holds more than a third of the world&#x27;s known uranium resources, by far the largest reserve base of any country, which makes the arrangement one of the more consequential fuel-security wins in India&#x27;s recent diplomatic calendar.On the other side of the globe, India signed its most commercially concrete uranium deal yet, a nine-year, roughly $2.6-billion agreement between Canada&#x27;s Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corporation and India&#x27;s Department of Atomic Energy, for the supply of close to 22 million pounds of uranium ore concentrate between 2027 and 2035.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined The deal, signed earlier in March, was struck during a visit by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and both governments described it as a cornerstone of a new India-Canada strategic energy partnership.Separately, NTPC Ltd, India&#x27;s largest power producer, tasked with building roughly 30 GW of the country&#x27;s 100-GW nuclear target, has issued a tender to appoint consultants who will help identify uranium mining assets it could invest in overseas, in countries including Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and South Africa.It is a telling move as state-run India is no longer content to simply buy uranium on long-term contracts.

It wants equity exposure to the mines themselves.<div data-pos="0" class="id-r-component iIpbx undefined Together, the Uzbekistan, Australia and Canada threads are not three separate stories, but rather a larger picture of a nation that spent decades under-investing in fuel security and is now compensating for lost time on...