The annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report as usual looks in great detail at the state of play for nuclear, mostly still not doing too well, compared with renewables, mostly doing better, with the report looking extensively at that as well as the ups and downs of nuclear. The renewable challenge is after all very striking: for example, global solar electricity generation has increased by about 28%, with costs continuing to fall. And crucially, in April 2025, renewables exceeded nuclear power generation globally for the first time.
However, although construction costs and delays remain a big problem, the nuclear story is not entirely negative. Given reactor start-ups and closures in 2024, nuclear added 5.3 GW net, while operating capacity increased by 2% and electricity output by 2.9%. But given the overall growth of electricity use, the nuclear share of global power has fallen to 9%. Whereas renewables are expanding overall. And that is despite some recent financial problems. For example, in 2024 wind energy deployment was hindered by the general economic & political environment. But even so wind electricity TWh generation still increased by close to 8%.
Nevertheless, despite renewable growth, WNISR concludes that, while ‘including hydro, gross electricity generation of all renewables grew by 862 TWh or 9.6 % in 2024’ that was ‘not enough to keep pace with the rising global electricity demand (up by 1,293 TWh), driven by higher temperatures, industrial expansion, electrification, and unambitious demand-side management & efficiency policies’. Although it says that renewables could in theory catch up with overall demand, that would require some major changes. The whole basis of the system logic must it says undergo a deep transformation, with a new framework for energy policy. Just comparing nuclear and renewables as if they were simply substitutable supply alternatives will not suffice: they are fundamentally different.
WNISR says ‘The underlying physics of the two technologies shows that significant disparities between them render nuclear inherently more costly, both in its present state and in the future’. For example, it says that ‘atomic energy is the only technology exploiting nuclear forces. It therefore has safety & security problems, as well as long-term liabilities, that competing technologies do not have. Technologies that exploit nano-level mechanisms in the electron shell of atoms, aided by quantum-mechanical insights, exhibit the most rapid innovation & cost decline’. And it concludes ‘an analysis of the system characteristics of the emerging overall energy system indicates that photovoltaics, batteries, and power electronics are already modifying the logic of the overall system in a manner that renders it increasingly challenging for nuclear power to be integrated into’.
That sounds quite optimistic for renewables if it is taken on board fully, but grim for nuclear, which it says ‘has essentially gotten stuck with the concepts of 75 years ago. While the quantum physics revolution has allowed progress in other fields, such as innovative materials, semiconductors, information technology, or artificial intelligence, it has only been marginally useful in advancing nuclear technologies.’
However, the new green techs have their own problems- notably the variability of some sources. WNISR says there are ‘widespread expectations that the expansion of renewables & especially solar will slow down,’ due to the need ‘to provide sufficient flexibility for high shares of renewables’. But solving this problem means that the whole system has to change, with flexible supply and demand and short and long term storage becoming very important, if we are get to net zero. Fortunately, WNISR says, ‘there is a wide array of opportunities for flexibility in the electricity system’ ranging from ‘reserve generation capacity provided by gas peaker plants to excess solar generation capacities curtailed during maximum sunshine, from batteries in homes to intermediate heat storage in industrial plants, and from changes in consumer habits or cost-neutral power use patterns to changes in industrial production rhythm enabled by additional intermediate product storage’.
Though it says that ‘those reluctant to embrace change call for a slowdown in the growth of renewables & are slow to pave the way for additional flexibility’, and also, ‘with some success, advocates of nuclear energy have spread the impression that decarbonization is expensive anyway and that alternatives to nuclear are no better.’ However, WNISR say that is wrong: ‘A series of simulations has consistently shown that 100-percent renewable energy systems are not more expensive than the conventional fossil- fuel-based approach. More importantly, 100-percent renewables-based systems are less costly than those that include nuclear power’.
Moreover, it claims that ‘nuclear plants do not provide the type of flexible, dispatchable power that can fill the gaps between solar power peaks. They need flexibility from other sources for bridging considerable planned and unplanned outages and for buffering between changing demand and their inflexible full-load operation. The cost of their baseload electricity is more expensive than the ultra-flexible combination of renewables-plus-storage-plus-flexible demand’. About all that WNISR seem able to offer as a possible driver for more high cost nuclear is that it can support the production of nuclear weapons. It quotes French President Macon’s claim that ‘without civil nuclear, no military nuclear; without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ That’s a pretty grim statement, and I will be exploring some of the implications for renewables of that sort of view in my next post.
In terms of the drive to nuclear, while WNISR notes that evidently ‘military considerations can override economic ones’, so can other factors and commitments. It says that there are ‘those who are still attached to the old (energy) paradigm, whether due to vested interests, ideological reasons, or deep identification with past activities and declining structures’. The dead hand of the past stop progress and the acceptance of new green energy paradigms. The report rounds off by saying that ‘changing paradigms is a tedious and slow process’ and notes that Max Planck, who was at the centre of a key paradigm shift in physics a century ago, said a bit bleakly ‘Science advances one funeral at a time.’ Let’s hope that’s not the only way it can happen. As WNISR warns ‘the time left for complete decarbonization of the energy system is short - not even a generation.’ Quite so. With a key attraction of renewables being that they are cheaper and faster to deploy than nuclear, with it being unclear if SMRs will offer any improvement, certainly not soon.
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