Last month, during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Tashkent, the main diplomatic outcome was an agreement between India and Uzbekistan to strengthen ties to the level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and set a goal for bilateral trade of $5 billion annually by 2030. However, a phrase in the joint statement may hold much greater significance for Indian planners than the trade target: both countries agreed to work on a long-term framework for uranium supplies.
Prime Minister Modi told delegates in Tashkent that India would 'create a long-term agreement on uranium supplies,' calling it the next step in the two countries' energy cooperation. It is easy to overlook why one line about uranium in the joint statement matters. But this may be the clearest sign of a growing race quietly unfolding across three continents—from Central Asia to Australia and North America—as India seeks to fuel what could become one of the most ambitious nuclear expansion programs of this century.
Currently, the country operates 24 nuclear reactors with a total capacity of about 8.78 gigawatts (GW). The Central Government's nuclear energy mission, announced in the State Budget for 2025-26, aims to reach 100 GW by 2047, representing an increase of more than eleven times, with an intermediate goal of approximately 22 GW by 2031-32. Nevertheless, this goal is accompanied by a fuel challenge.
Industry estimates suggest that a 100 GW fleet will require 18,000 to 20,000 tons of natural uranium per year, which accounts for about one-third of the current global mining output. India's domestic uranium reserves, concentrated in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, and Meghalaya, are relatively scarce and have historically constrained rather than supported the country's civilian nuclear program. For decades, this deficit was managed discreetly through several government contracts. Now, with the approved expansion target, this has become the defining logic of a wave of intersecting diplomatic and commercial deals, of which the framework with Uzbekistan is just the latest.
India's relationship with Uzbekistan regarding uranium is not new. In January 2019, both countries signed a contract under which the Uzbek state company Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company agreed to supply 1,100 metric tons of natural uranium concentrate to India until 2026. According to parliamentary records, India received about 600 metric tons from this contract volume by March 2025, meaning the current agreement always required renewal, regardless of its expiration or lack thereof. What has changed is the structure in Tashkent.
Instead of negotiating a single subsequent contract, the parties are now working on a long-term agreement that should surpass the transactional cycle of the 2019 deal. Siby George, Western Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, quoted by news agency PTI, stated that 'positive discussions' have taken place regarding a long-term uranium supply agreement, and that the governments are 'approaching' its signing. Although the new pact specific to uranium was not among the eleven officially signed agreements during the visit, the framework itself is still being finalized, but both governments used the summit to signal that Uzbekistan, one of the world's largest uranium producers, will remain a permanent element of India's fuel security plan, not an obsolete supplier being phased out.
Earlier, in July, India finalized an Administrative Agreement with Australia under their 2014 Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. This agreement, concluded at the Third India-Australia Annual Summit in Melbourne, activates the pact that paves the way for the long-term export of Australian uranium to India under IAEA guarantees. Australia holds over a third of known global uranium reserves, possessing undoubtedly the largest reserve base of any country, making this agreement one of the most significant successes in India's recent diplomatic calendar for fuel security.
On the other side of the globe, India signed its most commercially concrete uranium deal: a nine-year agreement worth about $2.6 billion between the Saskatchewan-based corporation Cameco, Canada, and the Department of Atomic Energy of India, for the supply of nearly 22 million pounds of uranium ore concentrate between 2027 and 2035. This deal, concluded earlier in March, was reached during the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and both governments called it the cornerstone of the new strategic energy partnership between India and Canada.
It is also worth noting that NTPC Ltd, India's largest power generator, responsible for building about 30 GW of the country's target 100 GW nuclear capacity, issued a tender to hire consultants to help identify foreign uranium mining assets in countries such as Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, and South Africa. This is a telling move, as state-owned India is no longer satisfied with simply acquiring uranium through long-term contracts; it wants to gain stakes in the mines themselves.
The combination of directions with Uzbekistan, Australia, and Canada is not three separate stories, but rather a broader picture of a nation that has underinvested in fuel security for decades and is now compensating for lost time on every continent where this mineral is located.
The external search for fuel has a mirror reflection domestically: an internal policy shift that may be even more important for India's energy sector. In December 2025, Parliament passed the Sustainable Use and Promotion of Nuclear Energy for Transformation of India (SHANTI Act), ending the sixty-year state monopoly on civilian nuclear power generation. Under the new law, private companies can build, own, and operate nuclear power plants for the first time, while the government retains control over the most sensitive parts of the chain—uranium enrichment, heavy water production, and long-term spent fuel management.
The reaction from Indian business was immediate. A tender placed by the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India for the joint development of 220 MW 'Bharat Small Reactors' generated interest from Reliance Industries, Adani Power, Tata Power, Hindalco Industries, Jindal Steel and Power, and JSW Energy—a list of India's largest industrial conglomerates, each seeking to secure its own round-the-clock energy for steel, cement, and data center operations, which the coal network is increasingly unable to provide cheaply or cleanly.
Tata Power has moved furthest, publicly targeting the commissioning of India's first private nuclear plant between 2032-33, with construction potentially starting as early as 2028 on sites being studied in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Gujarat. The SHANTI Act creates demand; Tashkent, Melbourne, and Saskatchewan are where the supply is secured.
There is another reason why India's race for uranium should be viewed as part of a much longer-term nuclear strategy. For decades, India has pursued a three-stage nuclear program aimed at more efficient utilization of its vast thorium reserves. The key transition is from modern uranium-fueled reactors to fast breeder reactors, and then to reactors using uranium-233 derived from thorium. The Department of Atomic Energy describes thorium-232 as a material that can be converted into fissile uranium-233 for the third stage of the program. This strategy reached an important milestone this year when the 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, achieved criticality for the first time. The DAE describes the PFBR as the flagship of the second stage of India's three-stage nuclear program and states that thorium-232 can be converted into uranium-233 through transmutation, providing fuel for the third stage.
However, this technology does not offer India an immediate escape from its uranium problem. The PFBR itself is part of a transition, whereas the large-scale nuclear expansion planned for 2047 still requires traditional reactors and, consequently, reliable access to uranium fuel. This explains the apparent contradiction at the heart of India's nuclear strategy: the country is rushing globally for uranium today while simultaneously developing technologies designed to make its nuclear fuel cycle more self-sufficient tomorrow. This distinction is crucial because thorium is not the shortest path to the 100 GW goal, but a long-term bet on the architecture of India's nuclear program, while imported and domestic uranium will remain critically important for the expansion planned now.
What next for India? None of the concluded deals, whether with Uzbekistan, Australia, or Canada, alone bring closer the closing of the fuel gap implied by the 100 GW by 2047 target. Each is best understood as one card in India's hand, which it is still collecting: diversifying suppliers, avoiding dependence on any single country or company, and buying time for domestic reforms, the SHANTI Act, the Bharat small reactor program, and the long-term bet on thorium, of which India holds some of the world's largest reserves, so they can mature into a functional power generation fleet. The uranium framework in Tashkent, when signed, cannot power a single reactor on its own. But it is a useful marker of how far India has advanced in eighteen months: from a country that mined and imported uranium exclusively through the state, to a country that is conducting parallel negotiations with suppliers from Central Asia, Australian mining companies, and Canadian producers, while its largest private conglomerates await their first nuclear license. The race is real. The question of whether fuel will arrive quickly enough to meet India's ambitions for reactor construction must be answered in the coming budget cycles.
