India's three-stage nuclear power programme

India's three-stage nuclear power programme is an Indian nuclear program focused on enabling the utilisation of India's thorium reserves in meeting the country's energy requirements through the use of nuclear power. It was planned by physicist Homi J. Bhabha in the 1950s to secure the country's long term energy independence, through the use of uranium and thorium reserves found in the monazite sands of coastal regions of South India.

Thorium is particularly attractive for India, as India has only around 1–2% of the global uranium reserves, but one of the largest shares of global thorium reserves at about 25% of the world's known thorium reserves. However, thorium is more difficult to use than uranium as a fuel because it requires breeding, and global uranium prices remain low enough that breeding is not cost effective.

India published about twice the number of papers on thorium as its nearest competitors, during each of the years from 2002 to 2006. The Indian nuclear establishment estimates that the country could produce 500 GWe for at least four centuries using just the country's economically extractable thorium reserves.

The first Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor has been repeatedly delayed – and was commissioned in March 2024 – and India continues to import thousands of tonnes of uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan, France, and Uzbekistan. The 2005 Indo–US Nuclear Deal and the NSG waiver, which ended more than three decades of international isolation of the Indian civil nuclear programme, have created many hitherto unexplored alternatives for the success of the three-stage nuclear power programme.