[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]This letter is written in the public interest.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]Dr. Kakodkar, as the former Chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission and a long-recognised public custodian of the nation’s thorium vision, your association with recent developments in thorium commercialisation invites unavoidable questions.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]After nearly seventy years of publicly funded research and billions in expenditure, India’s nuclear establishment—led institutionally by bodies you once headed—did not deliver a commercially deployable thorium fuel. Yet in 2025, a foreign private company, incorporated barely seven years ago and on whose advisory board you now serve, secured commercial licensing for a thorium-based fuel intended for Indian reactors—fuel that carries your name.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]This contrast is now a matter of public record.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]Accordingly, the nation is entitled to answers to the following questions:
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]At what stage did India’s thorium programme stop short of commercial deployment, despite demonstrated technical feasibility?
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]What specific factor prevented licensing and deployment of thorium fuel in Indian PHWRs—was it technical, regulatory, institutional, or policy-related?
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]Was this factor formally documented within the Department of Atomic Energy, and if so, was it ever placed in the public domain or communicated to Parliament?
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]If the obstacle has since been resolved, what precisely changed—and why did that resolution materialise outside India’s nuclear establishment?
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]How should the public interpret a situation where a programme funded, defended, and articulated as a national strategic priority reaches commercial fruition elsewhere outside India?
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]These questions concern a publicly funded strategic programme. They do not concern individual conduct.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]Strategic initiatives are ultimately judged not by effort or intent, but by delivery. India completed the science. It did not complete deployment.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]The gap between those two outcomes now stands documented.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]The nation wants to know why.
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]Read the full story:
[color=hsl(0,0%,0%)]India’s Big Nuclear Flop: How a Crown Jewel Slipped Away
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