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.
Read more: Govt commits £14.2bn to new nuclear power station
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,…
