Just like the dusty vinyl records your parents were on the verge of tossing for years, nuclear power is undergoing a renaissance.
For decades, the energy source fell out of favor due to safety concerns and high plant construction costs; its share of the world’s electricity supply plummeted to 9% in 2024 from 17% in 1996, according to the global energy think tank Ember.
But in recent years, amid advances in safety and experimental tech promising greater affordability, many countries have begun to view nuclear power generation as a source of scalable low-carbon energy. Meanwhile, tech giants have started bankrolling reactors to power the AI boom.
America united around splitting atoms
In the US, the embrace of nuclear energy has been bipartisan. During the Biden administration, Congress passed subsidies to incentivize the deployment of nuclear energy. And in his second term, President Trump issued executive orders aimed at reducing regulatory hurdles for new reactors, with the stated aim of quadrupling capacity by 2050.
Over a dozen reactors have been closed in the US since 2012, and no new large-scale nuclear power plants are getting built—yet. But as anticipated next-gen reactors undergo regulatory review, several older decommissioned ones are getting de-mothballed:
A decommissioned reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in American history, is due to go back online (it wasn’t involved in the 1979 accident). The reactor’s owner, Constellation Energy, signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with Microsoft last year.
And this summer, the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan became the first decommissioned US nuclear power plant to return to operational status, financed in part by a $1.5 billion loan from the Department of Energy.
The world powers ahead
Despite the renewed enthusiasm in the US, the vast majority of new capacity is coming online in other countries.
China, which lacks fossil fuel reserves, has added 80% of the world’s new nuclear capacity in the past five years and is due to surpass the US in total nuclear power generation, according to the International Energy Agency.
Meanwhile, the EU gave nuclear power a boost when it recognized it as a clean energy source, making it eligible for government subsidies. France currently plans to build six new nuclear reactors.
The UK plans to increase its nuclear capacity to meet 25% of its electricity needs by 2050, up from 15% currently. And Russia is working on 19 nuclear power plants beyond its borders in places like Turkey, Iran, and Bangladesh, making it the biggest exporter of nuclear capacity.
Looking ahead…Goldman Sachs projects that the world will have 500 functioning nuclear reactors in 2030, up from the current 440. By 2040, nuclear power will supply 12% of global electricity compared to the current 9%, according to the bank’s estimates.