With growing scarcity of fossil fuels, the atomic energy is gaining more and more significance in India. Discuss the availability of raw material required for the generation of atomic energy in India and in the world.

With fossil fuels depleting and net-zero commitments tightening, nuclear power offers India dense, low-carbon baseload energy; yet it supplies under three per cent of the country's electricity, and its expansion depends on fissile raw materials.

Availability in India

• Uranium: India's reserves are modest and mostly low-grade. The Singhbhum belt of Jharkhand (Jaduguda, Bhatin, Narwapahar, Turamdih) is the oldest producer; Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh holds one of the country's largest deposits; other prospects being explored by the Atomic Minerals Directorate include Lambapur-Peddagattu (Telangana), Domiasiat-Wahkyn (Meghalaya) and Rohil (Rajasthan).
• Thorium: India holds among the world's largest thorium resources in the monazite beach sands of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh — the basis of the third stage of the Bhabha three-stage programme (PHWRs → fast breeders → thorium-U233 reactors).

Availability in the world

• Kazakhstan is the largest uranium producer (about two-fifths of world output), with Canada (high-grade Athabasca basin mines like Cigar Lake) and Australia (Olympic Dam, the largest known resource) as the other majors; Namibia, Niger, Russia and Uzbekistan follow.
• After the 2008 NSG waiver, India signed supply agreements with Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, France and Russia, easing the fuel constraint on safeguarded reactors.

India's scarce uranium but abundant thorium argues for securing diversified imports in the short run while accelerating fast-breeder and thorium technologies — the logic now extended by the plan to open the nuclear sector to greater private participation and small modular reactors.