VR drills for the welders, riggers and fitters building India's next reactors
TL;DR Practiceyard sells headset drills to the contractors who build and maintain nuclear plants - walking into a radiation zone, getting in and out of protective gear, rigging heavy loads in tight rooms. Contractors pay per trainee or per site licence. It doesn't train or license reactor operators, which stays with the plant operator.
India runs 24 reactors with 8,780 MWe today[1] and wants 100 GW by 2047[2]. That's more than ten times the current fleet, and most of the work will fall on contractors' crews rather than plant staff. Captive small reactors add new builders too, because under NPCIL's model the industrial user builds the plant under NPCIL supervision and then hands it over[3].
A lot of those crews will come from steel, refinery and cement jobs where radiation is new to them. The first time a fitter practises contamination control should not be inside a controlled area. And slides are a poor way to show something you can't see. No public figure on the size of India's nuclear construction skills gap turned up.
What it does, in regulatory terms: induction and skills practice only. Practiceyard does not certify radiation workers or reactor operators. Plant-specific qualification stays with the licensee and the AERB[4]. Completion records back up the site's own sign-off but never replace it.
We reframed the seed, which pitched immersive VR to fix the nuclear skills gap. Control-room operators already train on full-scope simulators from specialist firms and a startup can't win there. The open space is the much bigger crowd on site.
So the product is a library of 15–25 minute headset drills. You walk a radiation zone with a dose map you can actually see, put on and take off protective clothing in the right order, work out a rigging plan in a cramped room and respond to an alarm. Every drill logs mistakes, and supervisors get a dashboard by crew. Kits travel to site in a rugged case and work offline (no gaming PC needed).
The payer is the safety or training head at an EPC contractor or equipment supplier on a nuclear project, and later the captive project owners themselves. The trainees are welders, fitters, riggers and electricians. Pricing is our guess - ₹3,000–6,000 per trainee for a module set, or a yearly site licence. We found no public price for nuclear-specific VR training in India.
The SHANTI Act got assent on 20 December 2025 and opens licences to private companies[4]. Several large private conglomerates and BHEL have all shown interest in captive small reactors[5]. Every new owner and contractor will need workers who have never set foot on a nuclear site. And standalone headsets now run offline drills on their own.
There's no public figure for nuclear training spend in India. The counts that help are the 24 operating reactors[1] and the list of companies weighing captive units[5]. One adjacent data point - a 2026 study found VR lifted students' understanding of radiation, 4.70 against 1.85 on a five-point scale, but did nothing for hands-on skill[6]. So sell it as preparation and not as a substitute.
A Noida simulation firm sells VR and AR simulators for welding, fire safety and scaffolding to over 400 enterprise clients, and it lists energy among its sectors, but it shows no nuclear drills[7]. A US nuclear services firm builds full-scope nuclear simulators for operators[8]. What's missing is nuclear-specific drills priced for contractor crews.
| Difficulty | Moderate (44/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.2–2.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
Good drills need radiation-protection experts and real procedures, and plants guard their procedures closely. Sales are slow because each contractor has to get the site's safety team to accept the training, which is a second sale hiding inside the first. You'll also need content in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Gujarati for the crews.
No licence to sell training drills, but you sit inside a licensee's rules and can't certify anyone.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI write or change radiation-safety content on its own. Every module needs a qualified expert's sign-off, and Practiceyard certifies no one.
Want to work out the AI layer for Practiceyard? Talk to Yash →
I think this suits a founder with radiation-protection or nuclear construction experience who can pay the bills with general industrial VR work first. It's a poor fit for a pure game studio. Prove one thing before anything else - that one contractor's safety head will make a VR drill a required step before site entry.
Plan for roughly ₹1.2–2.2 Cr, mostly for building the drill library, headsets and pilots with contractors.
No licence to sell drills. The licensee stays responsible for qualifying workers, and every radiation-safety module needs an expert's sign-off.
Yes, reactor construction crews need induction everywhere. Check how the local regulator and licensees treat training records first.
The free Practiceyard validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the training and data rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for contractor safety heads, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Practiceyard or something close to it? The make-or-break step is getting a plant's safety team to accept drills built on its own procedures, and that's the kind of door I help founders open. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.