Amory Lovins teaches engineering at Stanford, and is cofounder and chairman emeritus of RMI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An intensive influence campaign seeks to resurrect a \u201cnuclear renaissance\u201d from the industry\u2019s slow-motion collapse documented in the independent annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Claims that past failures won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
This illusion neatly fits the industry\u2019s business-model shift from selling products to harvesting subsidies.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t need normal precautions (though not safe enough to waive nuclear energy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 only fueling and fixing them. Nuclear electricity loses in open auctions, so only Congressional bailouts \u2014 $27 billion ($15 billion paid out) in 2005, $133 billion in 2021-22, tens of billions more in 2025 \u2014 saved most existing U.S. reactors from closure.<\/p>\n
Now comes another vision: powering the glorious new world of artificial intelligence. This may be a trillion-dollar bubble, but it\u2019s 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 \u2014 to just 3%. So AI won\u2019t eat the grid. But IEA forecasts renewables will power data-center growth\u00a010-20 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Despite having turned nuclear power into a minor distraction, renewables are dismissed as \u201cintermittent.\u201d Again, facts intrude.<\/p>\n
Military and industrial installations already prefer 100% renewables for their most critical applications, including Apple\u2019s 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%.<\/p>\n
And since a nuclear kWh costs several to many times more than a renewable or saved kWh \u2014 even more if nuclear load-follows to \u201ccomplement\u201d rather than curtail renewables \u2014 nuclear displaces less fossil fuel per dollar (or year), making climate change worse.<\/p>\n