Abstract: Nuclear power has been held out as a potentially important source of energy in the country. The Intended Nationally Determined Contribution document (INDC) submitted ahead of the Climate meeting in Paris talks about it as one of the many steps being undertaken to lower emissions and an installed capacity of 63 gigawatts by the year 2032. Much larger installed capacities are envisioned for the longer term future. This talk will evaluate the likelihood of these expectations being met by considering the history of over six decades of atomic energy in the country and the lessons one can learn from the experiences with building multiple nuclear reactors.

Bio: M.V. Ramana is with the Nuclear Futures Laboratory and the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012). He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society.

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