A major outcome of the recently concluded visit of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to India was that an agreement was reached between the Department of Atomic Energy and a Canadian company for the long-term supply of uranium to power India’s nuclear reactors.

Canadian company Cameco will supply 22 million pounds (about 10,000 tonnes) of uranium between 2027 and 2035, which is the main fuel in nuclear reactors. This contract is worth 2.6 billion Canadian dollars ($1.9 billion).
Two weeks earlier, India also finalised a similar agreement with Kazakhstan’s state-owned company Kazatomprom. The scale of that deal has not yet been made public. Canada’s company Cameco had recently supplied uranium to India in 2020-21.
India and Canada have very long relations in the nuclear sector, which date back to the 1950s.
India’s second nuclear reactor, CIRUS (Canada India Reactor Utility Service), was a venture built in collaboration with Canada.
Canada also helped in installing nuclear reactors in the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPPs) in the 1960s.
With this new agreement with Cameco, India is now receiving uranium from at least four countries – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Canada and Russia, which has a lifetime supply commitment for the reactors being built at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.
In the coming years, more supply agreements may take place with countries such as Australia or the United States. Apart from this, Indian companies are studying the possibility of exploration and mining of uranium in other countries.

About India’s uranium reserves

According to the global industry organisation, World Nuclear Association, India’s uranium requirement in 2025 was 1,884 tonnes. According to UCIL estimates, in the coming years the annual domestic uranium requirement may increase to 5,400 tonnes, of which about 30 percent can be produced in the country itself.
Domestic production of uranium in India mainly takes place in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, where seven mines are operational. There are also some reserves in Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Telangana and some other states. Current estimates show that Indian reserves contain about 4.3 lakh tonnes of uranium ore, of which more than 80,000 tonnes are in the mines allotted to UCIL.
Despite having large reserves of uranium, India depends on imported uranium for its nuclear power plants. Domestic uranium reserves have low-quality ore, which is about 0.02 to 0.45 percent, whereas the global average is about 1 to 2 percent.
India’s government uranium miner, Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL), has informed a parliamentary panel that according to it, the uranium content in the ore grade in some mines of Canada is up to 15 percent. Because of this, the cost of domestic uranium is much higher than imported fuel.
The government’s target is to increase the installed capacity of nuclear energy from the current 9GW to 100 GW by 2047. India consumes about 1,500 to 2,000 tonnes of uranium every year.