Almost two decades after the India-US civil nuclear deal, on March 26, the US Department of Energy cleared Holtec International’s application to design and build nuclear reactors in India. It allows for the transfer of unclassified small modular reactor (SMR) technology to three companies in India — L&T, Tata Consulting Engineers and Holtec’s regional subsidiary, Holtec Asia. SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors that have a power generation capacity ranging from less than 30 MWe to 300 MWe. The clearance to Holtec, which comes at a time when US President Donald Trump is making a determined effort to push manufacturing in...