For years nuclear was a dirty word. Now, the tide is turning.
For the past 20 years or so, global nuclear power has stagnated amid concerns about its environmental damage and its safety after the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.
Another nail in its coffin appeared to be its appalling record of delays and spiralling costs, while wind and solar plummeted in price and soared in supply.
But leaders are warming up to nuclear power again, driven by a few key trends.
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First and foremost, they are anxious to keep pace with booming demand for low-carbon energy, driven by an explosion of data centres and the switch to electric cars and heat pumps.
Datacentres for AI and cloud computing not only have a voracious appetite for energy, but as they operate 24/7, they need a steady, reliable stream. Enter: nuclear, which can provide this most of the time.
The ‘flat pack’ power plant
Secondly, a new type of nuclear power plant may finally be on the horizon.
The much vaunted small modular reactors (SMRs) promise to be much faster and cheaper to build than something like Hinkley Point, because the parts can be built in a factory and assembled on site – the flat pack furniture of nuclear power.
They have long been celebrated but have failed to scale up. So far they exist only in Russia and China.
Nevertheless, industry and political leaders in other countries are confident their own SMR designs are almost ready to go, and the government on Tuesday said it wants Rolls-Royce to get the UK’s first SMRs online “in the 2030s”. That’s most likely another 10 years from now, so a mid-term solution, with much more clean power is needed in the meantime.
It also announced £14bn for Sizewell C, continuing plans for a nuclear revival started by the Tories.
Beyond the UK, leaders in the US, Canada, South Korea and France and even Japan – which suffered the 2011 Fukushima disaster – and Germany – which famously detests nuclear – are warming up to it again.
And so are businesses – last year Google became the first company to sign an agreement to buy nuclear energy from Kairos Power’s SMRs to power its data centres. Just last week Meta did the same with Constellation Energy.
As for traditional big plants, some are now being built on time and on budget, such as Barakah in the UAE. The South Korean company behind it is in talks to build the same type in the UK.
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Safety concerns switch from disaster to climate
Thirdly, countries are trying to get off fossil fuels to fend off worse climate change. Nuclear power is very low carbon, and it is also safer than many fear.
Death rates from air pollution and accidents are lower from nuclear power than from any energy form other than solar power, research by data scientists at Oxford University’s Our World in Data project suggest.
Nuclear power also has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any energy form over its lifespan, and cancer rates from accidents can be mitigated by robust responses, the scientists said.
The undeniable price tag
That’s not to say nuclear does no damage, and the government’s announcement on Tuesday glossed over what it will do with the radioactive waste.
Sizewell C has been very unpopular with some local campaign groups that protest its local damage to trees, birds and coastline, and they recently launched a fresh legal challenge to additional flood barriers.
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Traditional large reactors like Sizewell have also been eye-wateringly expensive and slow to build, and must be routinely taken offline for maintenance.
Critics argue that solar and wind power, backed up by batteries, are faster, cheaper and safer. Others want the money to be spent on reducing demand for power in the first place by insulating homes.
But societies and leaders are slowly becoming less concerned about nuclear disasters and other environmental impacts, and much more worried about climate change and reliable energy supplies – as crystallised by the 2022 energy crisis and recent mass power outage in Spain and Portugal.
