There was a renewed burst of enthusiasm for nuclear power a few years ago. In Australia, where I live it was confined to the political right and didn’t last long, but elsewhere support was broader. Most notable was the 2023 commitment by more than 20 countries, led by the US, UK and France, to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the three countries mentioned, that would imply building 330 GW of new capacity as well as replacing retiring capacity.
So far, this commitment has produced only one final investment decision, for two reactors at Sizewell C in the UK. Construction is expected to start in 2027, with commercial operation in the late 2030s at best. After that, there are no large plants even on the drawing boards in the UK. A few sites have been identified, and there’s a proposal for some half-size reactors (called SMRs but not actually modular or very small) to be built by Rolls-Royce. These don’t even have a prototype yet.
France is a few steps behind. Three sites have been identified, each with two reactors, but none has reached final investment decision yet. The most likely to happen is at Penly, but even that is doubtful. And once Macron’s term finishes in 2027, the political push is likely to dissipate.
Nothing at all is happening with large-scale new nuclear in the US. Proposals to complete the half-finished VC Summer plant in South Carolina have gone nowhere, and even the planned restart of the Palisades plant has missed multiple deadlines. The Trump Administration recently announced an $18.7 billion loan program with the aim of building ten AP1000 reactors, but this is just theatre. There are a few pilot small reactors with construction underway, but all such efforts have failed until now.
Looking at the world as a whole, the first half of 2026 has seen
- two (2) new reactors connected to the grid, both in China
-
three (3) construction projects reaching first nuclear concrete, all in China
-
zero (0) new final investment decisions outside China
-
one (1) new/revised export contract, probably just symbolic, between Rosatom and Uzbekistan
Generously assuming a 4:1 capacity ratio, the two new reactors would be equivalent to around 8 GW of firmed solar. That’s what China installs every week or so, and the world as a whole every four or five days.
In summary, nuclear power isn’t a vital source of energy, obstructed by politics. Outside China, it’s a zombie, animated by political imperatives. In China, it’s an afterthought, running far behind solar and wind, as well as (regrettably) new coal and gas, and about level with new hydro.
{ 25 comments }
Talin 07.01.26 at 1:47 am
Canada announced something recently, right? Where are they planning to store the waste? Similarly, what was Australia’s plan for long-term storage? I guess they’d have less of a NIMBY problem than some other countries.
Alan White 07.01.26 at 2:47 am
Here in Wisconsin there is a recently retired nuclear plant that will be revived in a decade or so. FWIW
Alex SL 07.01.26 at 7:41 am
As so often, what I find most interesting is the psychology of the proponents of nuclear power on social media. At some level, they must see the same reality. They must see that nuclear power is not getting anywhere while wind and solar and batteries are expanding rapidly. As I have written here before, my territory has been running on 100% renewables for a few years now (electricity supply; not cars, of course). Yet they still insist that such a thing is not possible and that we have to heavily invest into another energy source that is by definition not sustainable because it depends on a limited resource. What is going on in their heads?
Talin,
Just to be clear, the Australian government formulated no plan for long-term storage. This was a proposal by the conservative opposition, and then they lost the election, so it did not proceed to the stage where the concept of a plan would have been necessary.
D. S. Battistoli 07.01.26 at 9:42 am
I largely agree with your survey, though it’s worth working in data on Russian activity and nuclear planning in Africa (two overlapping spheres) into the overall picture.
Here in Africa, Russia is the only nuclear state building a power plant (El-Dabaa in Egypt, announced in 2015 and projected to come online in 2028—these things have long lead times) and has also signed agreements in the last three years with Rwanda, Namibia, South Africa (whose government is having a second go at a nuclear partnership with Russia after an earlier one was voided by its courts, but also after the United States stiff-armed SA on a variety of diplomatic and trade issues), and the Alliance of Sahelian States. Apparently Rosatom’s tally of active nuclear agreements in Africa numbers around 15, though many of these may be little more than aspirational.
South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana are usually the standard-four case studies for academic surveys of nuclear planning in Africa.
The only newly signed agreement in 2026 that I’ve read of on the continent has been what seems to be a rather loose memorandum of understanding between the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, the African Union, and the African Commission on Nuclear Energy.
Michael Cain 07.01.26 at 1:16 pm
The Gates/Buffett project in Wyoming has broken ground and has the necessary permits and licenses for everything short of loading fuel. The sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor will be rated at 345 MWe. Don’t know if that counts as large or not. The project is billed as a complement to wind/solar. It’s unique feature is a molten-salt heat storage buffer that will allow the steam loop that actually generates electricity to do load following, and peak to 500 MW output for a few hours.
TerraPower is the Gates company in overall control. Buffett’s PacifiCorp is a large utility looking to get rid of its remaining coal-fired plants and provided a site with an existing major connection to the Western Interconnect power grid.
Aardvark Cheeselog 07.01.26 at 2:35 pm
There has long been enthusiasm for nuclear power among US conservatives, in the face of all evidence that it’s a blind alley technology. Less well-remarked is the perennial hope for economical fusion power on the more progressive side. Even when it’s explained to them that “clean” fusion will still produce radioactive messes when it’s time to decommission the plants, if they could ever be built, even when it’s pointed out how renewables + batteries are already better than any energy-generation technology that uses any kind of fuel, even when it’s explained that the near-break-even experiments they read about in a feature article are for a reactor design that studies bomb explosions and is useless for power generation, they still think that fusion would be cool enough to justify continued investment.
John 07.01.26 at 6:58 pm
Whoa now “Valar Atomics” had their test reactor go critical in Utah a few weeks ago. So in the United States nuclear power at least has additional potential as a means for tech money laundering.
Gary Souza 07.01.26 at 8:07 pm
In ten years, the cost of solar, wind, batteries and end use efficiency will drop even further, even faster. In ten years, the demand that could be met by that nuclear plant will already be met.
Austin George Loomis 07.01.26 at 8:58 pm
Alex and Aardvark: They can control a supply of a limited fuel and get rich doing so. They can’t even monopolize the sun or the wind, let alone get rich from holding such a monopoly. There is, as somebody once said about a less peripheral principle of conservatism, nothing more or else to it.
JG 07.03.26 at 6:11 pm
The basemat for Canada’s first SMR was installed this year. This has been interpreted as the equivalent of pouring the first nuclear concrete. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/darlington-smr-nuclear-project-foundation-module-milestone
JG 07.03.26 at 7:19 pm
Solar, wind, and batteries have made incredible strides, but the problem of seasonal fluctuations (particularly in high latitudes) is enormous. The Fraunhofer institute did a study of pathways to carbon neutrality in Germany by 2045; they forecast a need for 400 GWh battery storage for short-term fluctuations but 130 TWh hydrogen storage. The idea is to have up to 68 GW of electrolysis running when there is a surplus of renewable power, and a full backup system of power plants ready to burn it during a Dunkelflaute.
I’m not aware of any medium or large grid that has yet managed to run fully on renewables and battery power for an extended period (even a full day would be an achievement). South Australia is commonly cited, but they aren’t yet there: “By 2025/2026, this is projected to reach 85%, with a target of 100% net renewable energy by 2027“. 100% net renewable next year will also be a great achievement, but the word “net” is doing a lot:
By this logic, I could be a “net” vegan by signing up for a farm share program that delivers enough vegetables to feed me for a year, even if I sell it when I receive more than I can eat during the harvest season and I buy some steak when the farm delivery isn’t enough.
John Q 07.03.26 at 9:05 pm
JG – I assigned Ontario to last year. More relevantly, I’m doing a detailed analysis of why this project is a financial disaster
As regards ” (even a full day would be an achievement)”, SA has been doing this regularly since 2021 – I’ve seen a claim of 249 hours straight. SA doesn’t have any capacity for hydro (driest state in the driest continent, as I was regaularly reminded at school) but for most places, hydro is the best option for long-duration storage at the moment.
engels 07.03.26 at 9:29 pm
What is going on in their heads?
I think a lot of it is contrarianism in the pejorative sense (discussed in previous CT/Quiggin posts iirc).
bad Jim 07.04.26 at 5:17 am
In theory, geothermal power is available almost anywhere with a deep enough hole, which could be drilled with widely available equipment (much of which would be in use for fracking if the price of gas was high enough).
There are of course regional environmental concerns: the presence of aquifers, the aftermath of previous oil and gas exploration and extraction, and the need for a working fluid, typically water, which may be locally scarce.
Nevertheless, it would seem to present fewer difficulties than the use of comparatively rare fissionable metals with alternate uses and few or no substitutes.
Alex SL 07.04.26 at 11:12 am
Austin George Loomis,
The kind of keyboard warrior I am thinking about does not get to sell uranium or own a reactor, at best they get to lick the boots of those that do. Contrarianism (engels at 13) seems like a more plausible explanation, although I struggle to understand the psychology. Especially in the USA, conservatives clearly have adopted the habit of reflexively being against anything that the ‘liberals’ are in favour of. That seems less common in other countries, though.
Bob 07.05.26 at 2:33 am
John Q @ 12. No need to post this. But could you please share the results of your Ontario analysis on CT, or let me know where it will be posted when it is completed? Thanks!
DCA 07.05.26 at 2:34 am
Let’s see, nuclear in Egypt–makes perfect sense, they lack both vacant land and regular sunshine…….
The first solar steam plant ever (3.5 kW) was in Algeria in 1864; one in Egypt (70 kW) ran from about 1900-1915.
Hard to understand what the Sub-Sahelian states are thinking here.
Nathan Lillie 07.05.26 at 7:44 am
Nuclear is attractive as a rhetorical red herring precisely because it 1) takes a long time to build 2) is more expensive than fossil fuels. While some nuclear plants might get built it is inherently self-limiting. Solar and wind are undesirable because of their ability to out-compete fossil fuels on price. Solar is particularly threatening because it can be flexibly deployed economically at any scale, and because the excuses for restrictive regulation on it are so obviously implausible (unlike wind where scale matters and the restrictions are less obviously implausible). This is why nuclear is constantly being pushed – not because it will work to displace fossil fuels, but because it won’t. The argument “let’s build nuclear (instead)” is not a good faith argument.
Laban 07.05.26 at 11:01 am
It is at least in theory possible to have a reactor that doesn’t need water cooling and can “burn” nuclear waste, transmuting it to safer elements with much shorter half lives.
AFAIK the only people looking at this currently are (inevitably) the Chinese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR_(Chinese_reactor_project)
Jim Harrison 07.06.26 at 12:13 am
Two things seem to be the case:
The left and people in general overestimate the dangers nuclear power. It’s not that they have no risks, but chemical plants and coal-fired generators not only can but do make more serious contributions to mortality and morbidity than nuclear power. Death by Monsanto, no waiting.
Even if new nuclear plants might be useful in particular circumstances, their economics rules ’em out as a major part of preventing or mitigating climate change.
Obviously, technical progress may change the calculation; but as of now, nukes seem like a hobbyhorse that sides are willing to ride to nowhere.
Thomas Gordon Hewitt 07.06.26 at 4:33 am
I think conservative motivations are primarily twofold. As previously mentioned pissing off liberals is high up there. Related to that is the compulsion to appear superficially strong. Doing something that hurts others, like throwing out environmental controls, gives off the vibe that “I’m serious about energy, and anti-woke enough to hurt people in the process.” Of course securing financial support from otherwise fossil fuel interests is also a big motivater for the politicians,
Tm 07.06.26 at 6:24 am
DCA: “Hard to understand what the Sub-Sahelian states are thinking here.”
At least the Sahel states are known for their political stability, no danger of civil war or terrorist attacks against nuclear plants any time soon …
Yes it’s really really mind-boggling what these leaders are thinking.
Zamfir 07.06.26 at 10:05 am
@Laban, keep in mind that there are many, many alternative designs on the drawing board already since the 1950s. Low enriched U, high enriched U, Th, MOx. No breeding, slow breeding, fast breeding. Light water moderated, heavy water, graphite. Cooling by liquid water, boiling water, air, He, CO2, molten salt (of various kinds), liquid metal. A variety of secondary cooling loops. Fuel in zirconium, or TRISO, or suspension. Contiuous refuel, batch refuel, lifetime fuel. Sizes from single megawatt to many gigawatt. Modular construction this or that. Passive safety cooling, various shutoff mechanisms. Various shapes and materials for building or cooling loop. Coproduction of heat, or steam, or hydrogen.
There is a whole zoo of concepts. Some might eventually turn out better than the current state of the art. But all of them have been on drawing boards for decades because their balance of pros and cons was not overwhelmingly favourable
J-D 07.07.26 at 2:53 am
George Orwell, ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’:
Aardvark Cheeselog 07.09.26 at 5:53 pm
There’s a whole zoo of concepts that are fascinating and plausible-seeming to people without nuclear engineering backgrounds. When you look at the actual records of efforts to develop some of these concepts (and there have definitely been attempts to move some off the drawing boards) the plausible part starts to look weaker. When you look at the opinions of people who do have nuclear engineering backgrounds, they offer all kinds of reasons why these technologies have mostly remained undeveloped. Liquid metal coolant reactors have been built: the Soviets used then to power submarines. They never figured out a design that could be shut down for refueling and restarted, and they wound up decommissioning the reactors after their first fuel load was used, cutting them out of the hulls of the subs, and sinking them in deep ocean sites to get rid of them. The Russians improved on that with land based designs but nobody else has matched them for commercial scale operation. The same critique applies to plutonium fuel cycle designs: the Russians operate a demonstration unit and nobody else has matched that.
Attempts to demonstrate a net-power-generation system with thorium fuel have been similarly expensively unsuccessful. Nobody is currently attempting to demonstrate a thorium fuel cycle design. It’s been an infinitely deep money pit every time it’s been tried.
What I’m trying to get across here, is that if you want to project a bright future for fission power, you labor under a significant burden of proof of non-crackpottery.
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