Nuclear power is considered to be in decline, as the development of new nuclear projects becomes costly and slow. Politicians are being persuaded to support nuclear investments that have been rejected by private markets, yet the industry faces obstacles akin to those affecting fossil fuels, including uncompetitive costs and dwindling profits. The hype around a “nuclear renaissance” is being fueled by misconceptions about safety and efficiency, and attempts to associate nuclear power with emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are seen as misplaced. With renewables outpacing nuclear in both capacity and cost-effectiveness, there are concerns regarding the future viability of nuclear energy.
An intensive influence campaign seeks to resurrect a “nuclear renaissance” from the industry’s slow-motion collapse documented in the independent annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Claims that past failures won’t recur have convinced many politicians that socializing nuclear investments rejected by private capital markets, weakening or bypassing rigorous safety regulation, suppressing market competition, and commanding military reactor and data-center projects as a national-security imperative will restore nuclear expansion and transform the economy. This illusion neatly fits the industry’s business-model shift from selling products to harvesting subsidies. A few awkward facts intrude. Even the most skilled firms and nations keep delivering big reactors with several times the promised cost and construction time. A swarm of startup firms that have never built a reactor are dubiously rebranding their inexperience as a winning advantage.
New designs are said to be so safe they don’t need normal precautions (though not safe enough to waive nuclear energy’s unique exemption from accident liability). Political interference in nuclear licensing is eroding public confidence. Proposed smaller reactors cost more per kWh, produce more nuclear waste per kWh, and often need more-concentrated fuel directly usable for nuclear weapons. And nuclear power faces the same fundamental challenges as fossil fuels: uncompetitive costs, runaway competitors, dwindling profits, and uncertain demand. Few if any vendors have made profits selling reactors — only fueling and fixing them. Nuclear electricity loses in open auctions, so only Congressional bailouts — $27 billion ($15 billion paid out) in 2005, $133 billion in 2021-22, tens of billions more in 2025 — saved most existing U.S. reactors from closure.
Now comes another vision: powering the glorious new world of artificial intelligence. This may be a trillion-dollar bubble, but it’s sellable until market realities intervene. The International Energy Agency expects data centers, mostly non-AI, to cause only a tenth of global electricity demand growth to 2030, doubling their share of usage — to just 3%. So AI won’t eat the grid. But IEA forecasts renewables will power data-center growth 10-20 times over, while Bloomberg NEF predicts over 100. Nuclear lost the race to power the grid, so new reactors have no business case or operational need. Each year, nuclear adds as much net global capacity as renewables add every two days. Soaring renewables generate three times more global electricity than stagnant nuclear power, whose 9% world and 18% U.S. shares keep shrinking. In 2023-24, China added 197 times more solar and wind than nuclear capacity, at half the cost. In May, China added 93 GW of solar, or 3 GW per day.
Despite having turned nuclear power into a minor distraction, renewables are dismissed as “intermittent.” Again, facts intrude. Military and industrial installations already prefer 100% renewables for their most critical applications, including Apple’s data centers in four states. Ten kinds of carbon-free resources can balance variable (but highly predictable) renewables, keeping the grid stable. Using a small subset, power systems with modest or no hydropower already sustain such annual renewable fractions of electricity use as Denmark 88+%, South Australia 74% (expecting 100% in two years), and Germany 54%. And since a nuclear kWh
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