Here are 39 Reasons from the Past 18 Months to Be Excited About Nuclear Power’s Big, Growing Momentum

Multiple economic, political, and international factors have combined to give nuclear power the breakout it needed…

Nuclear momentum has been building steadily for several years. For example, in May of 2021, TVA announced it was partnering with Kairos to deploy a fluoride salt-cooled, high-temp Hermes test reactor in Oakridge, Tennessee. Then, in February of 2022, TVA announced its intent to deploy multiple new reactors of various types with its New Nuclear Program. In the same month, Nuscale announced a major milestone with its SMR program in Idaho (which was ultimately cancelled in November of 2023).

Other pressures have been steadily growing in the background as well. In 2010, over 50% of the electricity produced in the US was generated by coal-fired plants. By 2020, that had declined to just 25% due to accelerating retirements. Natural gas overtook coal in 2016 and has continued to grow steadily. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, was expected to only increase this trend.

Then, the mass rush into generative AI was born when OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in late 2022. It’s a potential game-changer, but it’s obliterating corporate carbon goals:

In 2020, for example, Google set a goal to run on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030. Microsoft made a similar pledge the same year, vowing to become carbon negative in a decade. 
But last year, Microsoft took a massive step backwards in that regard by increasing its greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, mostly due to its ambitious AI pursuits. “In 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence,” Microsoft president Brad Smith told Bloomberg. “So in many ways the moon is five times as far away as it was in 2020, if you just think of our own forecast for the expansion of AI and its electrical needs.”

Despite their years of rapid growth, wind and solar simply can’t keep up with accelerating net-zero data center demand and manufacturing and industrial growth.

So, nuclear power is back in vogue as the grid situation has turned serious.

Here are 39 significant events since roughly January of 2023 that have marked the increasing pace and, hopefully, permanence of this nuclear resurgence.

Commercial Nuclear Advancement

  1. January 2023: GE-Hitachi entered an agreement to deploy its advanced-nuclear BWRX-300 small modular reactor in Ontario, Canada.
  2. March 2023: Holtec applied for a loan from the Department of Energy to restart Palisades Nuclear Station (800 MW) after an unsuccessful attempt in 2022. (Entergy closed Palisades in May of 2022 and sold it to Holtec the following month.)
  3. July 7, 2023: GE-Hitachi announced plans to add three additional BWRX-300 SMRs to the Darlington site in Ontario, Canada.
  4. July 30, 2023: Vogtle Unit 3 entered commercial operation, 14 years after beginning construction. +1,100 MW of carbon-free nuclear power added to the grid.
  5. July 31, 2023: The State of Michigan provided $150 million to support a Palisades restart.
  6. September 2023: SNC announced that it received first-of-a-kind NRC approval to load new accident tolerant fuel (ATF) into Vogtle Unit 2. Westinghouse is fabricating the fuel assemblies for a planned 2025 installation.
  7. September 12, 2023: Holtec secured a buyer for the Palisades power.
  8. December 4, 2023: Holtec announced a plan to build two SMR-300 units at Palisades site by 2030.
  9. December 12, 2023: Kairos Power received construction permit to build its Hermes molten-salt demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
  10. December 2023: After two years of growing pressure, Diablo Canyon’s shutdown was cancelled and its life extended by five years after getting the thumbs up from both the California Public Utilities Commission and the NRC. It narrowly met the December 31 deadline.
  11. March 4, 2024: AWS paid over $600 million to acquire a data center site from Talen. It also secured a 10-year power-purchase agreement for up to 960 MW of green, carbon-free electricity directly from the Susquehanna nuclear plant.
  12. March 27, 2024: Holtec secures $1.52 billion loan from DOE to fund restart of Palisades by late-2025.
  13. April 29, 2024: Vogtle Unit 4 entered commercial operation. Another +1,100 MW of carbon-free nuclear power added to the grid.
  14. June 2024: Georgia governor hints at possibility of Vogtle Unit 5.
  15. June 2024: Rumors circulate that Vistra, Constellation, and PSEG may also be in talks to secure dedicated data center customers in deals similar to the AWS/Talen agreement.
  16. June 11, 2024: TerraPower breaks ground in Wyoming at its $4 billion advanced-nuclear Natrium reactor site.
  17. July 1, 2024: The Wall Street Journal publishes front-page article “Tech Industry Wants to Lock Up Nuclear Power for AI“.
  18. July 2024: News breaks of plans by Constellation to potentially restart Three Mile Island. An unsuccessful attempt was made to secure tax credits in the Pennsylvania state budget.
  19. July 10, 2024: Dominion Energy issues request for proposals to evaluate feasibility of deploying SMRs at its existing North Anna nuclear site in Virginia.

Political & Economic

The EIA estimated that small-scale solar made up one-third of installed US solar capacity in 2023, with residential solar making up a significant portion of that:

  1. December 2022: The California Public Utilities Commission voted to kill the cash cow that residential solar had become, reducing by 75% the amount utilities pay homeowners for their surplus solar power, effective April of 2023. The rules were expanded to also include commercial customers
  2. February 14, 2023: A bill, H.R. 1042, was introduced in the US House of Representatives to ban uranium imports from Russia.
  3. April 2023: California’s reduced solar rates go into effect. Demand for new residential solar installations immediately drops 90% in May.
Solar applications crashing in California. Original available at CalMatters.Org
  1. July 2023: A coup d’etat in Niger triggers a rapid spike in uranium prices, which rose quickly from $46 per pound to over $80.
  2. October 2023: The World Economic Forum sounds the alarm on the troubled wind industry in an article titled “The wind power industry is facing major cost headwinds.” It reported that over $30 billion in projects had been put on hold due to inflation, high interest rates, supply chain problems, and regulatory bottlenecks.
  3. December 11, 2023: H.R. 1042 passed in the House.
  4. December 13, 2023: Grid operators surprise media and markets with their big prediction in electrical demand growth. They’re now expecting peak demand to grow by 38 GW over the next five years, driven by big investments in domestic manufacturing, industry, and data centers.
  5. December 21, 2023: Bloomberg reveals a dozen other states have followed California’s lead in cutting solar subsidies. Consequently, “Installers are slashing jobs. Bankruptcies are mounting…As a result, rooftop solar’s rapid nationwide growth in recent years will likely slow.”
  6. January 25, 2024: Time Magazine publishes “The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be on the Verge of Collapse,” showing the largest solar installers (including SunPower) have lost over 80% of their stock value in less than 3 years while 6 times as many declared bankruptcy in 2023 than in the previous 3 years combined.
  7. February 2024: NRC approves 8% high enrichment fuel.
  8. April 30, 2024: H.R. 1042 passed in the Senate, taking effect August 11.
  9. May 2024: LBNL releases report showing California’s rooftop solar demand has not recovered.
  10. May 13, 2024: H.R. 1042 was signed into law.
  11. July 2024: Another wind industry alarm is sounded by McKinsey in an analysis warning of continued economic challenges; concludes smaller growth, fewer competitors, smaller profits lie ahead in a middle-of-the-road “just for the heroes” scenario.
  12. July 9, 2024: The US Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act was signed into law.
  13. July 19, 2024: Sunpower’s stock crashes 50% after telling dealers it will not support new leases and will be halting shipments in September. It closed Friday at 68 cents per share after achieving a decade-high of about $53 in January of 2021, losing 98.7% of its value in 42 months.

International

  1. December 2022: Japan announced a plan to fully embrace nuclear power and build new advanced-technology reactors to replace old ones. This signaled a significant shift in its post-Fukushima phase-out posture.
  2. December 2023: With over 27 nuclear reactors under construction, China began operation of the world’s first 4th generation nuclear reactor, a 200 MW gas-cooled unit at Shidaowan-1.
  3. December 2023: Over 20 countries declared to help triple the world’s nuclear capacity by 2050 to achieve carbon-neutrality during the World Climate Action Summit. In July of 2024, shortages of the necessary European skilled labor were being reported.
  4. July 2024: Italy plans to reintroduce nuclear power after imposing restrictions on new solar construction. It aims to pass legislation to permit investment in SMRs.

Conclusion

The years of massive increases of solar and wind generation seem to be over for now. Experts have begun predicting years of slowed growth and missed projections facing both industries. Economic data shows investment and growth have slowed over the last year as projects have been cancelled and companies have gone out of business.

But electricity demand growth has suddenly become a major concern with the big investments in manufacturing, industry, and rapid construction of AI data centers. Major players like Microsoft and Google have backed off of their aggressive 2030 carbon-neutral plans in an attempt to stay competitive and avoid falling behind.

Utilities have begun delaying some of their scheduled coal-fired plant retirements.

The only thing that can slow the rise in natural gas generation and a resurgence of coal-fired generation is nuclear power. And lots of it.

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