India's Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 has been both a safeguard and a deterrent. Critically evaluate its role in shaping India's nuclear energy trajectory.

The CLND Act, 2010 gave India its first statutory compensation regime for nuclear incidents, fixing no-fault liability on the operator with a cap of ₹1,500 crore [1]. Fifteen years on, its repeal by the SHANTI Act, 2025 [4] confirms a dual legacy: strong on victim protection, weak as investment-enabling law.

As a safeguard

• Strict, no-fault liability: victims need not prove negligence, ensuring prompt compensation — a legislative correction of the delays that followed the Bhopal disaster [1].
• Layered financial security: liability beyond the operator's cap devolves on the Central Government, up to 300 million SDR, so compensation is not limited by an operator's balance sheet [1][2].
• Supplier accountability: Section 17(b) created a right of recourse against suppliers for defective equipment or sub-standard services — a rare provision globally that pushed safety-by-design onto vendors [1].
• Sovereign credibility: a domestic liability statute was the precondition for operationalising India's civil nuclear cooperation agreements.

As a deterrent

• Section 17(b) departed from the international convention practice of channelling all liability to the operator; the SHANTI Act's removal of supplier liability precisely to "align with international conventions" is an official admission of this friction [4].
• Open-ended recourse and a broadly worded "supplier" made risk difficult to price or insure, raising project costs and stalling vendor negotiations.
• Outcome: installed nuclear capacity remained about 8,180 MW, far short of what the 100 GW by 2047 goal requires [3].
• Combined with the Atomic Energy Act's state monopoly, it foreclosed the private capital now being courted through the ₹20,000 crore Nuclear Energy Mission and NPCIL's RFP for 220 MW Bharat Small Reactors [3][5].

On balance, the Act was ethically sound but commercially self-limiting — it secured the victim while deferring the reactor. The SHANTI Act, 2025 retains graded strict operator liability and grants the AERB statutory backing accountable to Parliament [4], suggesting the correct path: safety guaranteed by an independent regulator rather than by deterring investment, so that nuclear power can credibly serve the Net Zero-2070 pledge.