India Targets 100 GW Nuclear Power Capacity by 2047

Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh has said that India's nuclear programme is meant for peaceful work and not for warfare, restating the thinking that has guided the country's atomic effort from its earliest days. He was speaking in a conversation on the margins of the Bloomberg Economy Forum 2026, and the remarks were carried by the Department of Atomic Energy on 20 October 2026.

The two targets to remember

The Minister placed the atomic plans inside the country's longer development and clean-energy goals. India is working towards 100 GW of nuclear power capacity by 2047, and towards Net Zero emissions by 2070. Nuclear generation, he said, is expected to sit alongside the other sources in the power mix because it can supply clean electricity without a break, which makes it a complement rather than a rival to the rest of the programme.

Why artificial intelligence changes the demand

Dr. Singh tied atomic power to the next stage of technological growth. As artificial intelligence spreads and the data centres behind it multiply, the call will be for a dependable supply of electricity on a large and continuous scale, and nuclear plants are expected to help carry that load in an increasingly technology-driven economy.

He described AI as a tool that belongs across fields rather than a field of its own, useful from space research and the life sciences to other branches of science and technology. On handling it well, the Minister said, "One has to be intelligent enough to use Artificial Intelligence." The gains, he added, are real in every domain, but keeping the technology from being misused by individuals or other actors is the harder task. Regulations exist, he noted, yet integrity at the level of the person and of the nation is what finally decides whether a technology is used responsibly.

Homi Bhabha, and room for private players

The Minister recalled Dr. Homi Bhabha, the architect of India's nuclear programme, saying that vision still steers a journey built around peaceful application and national development, even as the country widens its capabilities for newer developmental and technological needs.

He also pointed to the wider opening of critical and sensitive sectors to non-government players, which has enlarged the room for private industry in areas that were traditionally more closed, and created openings for firms to add to innovation, technological advance and national development. Taken together, the two threads he drew are the ones the country will lean on as it moves towards its goals for 2047 and its climate commitment for 2070: a firmer base of clean and reliable electricity, and a careful, human-led use of new technology.