ChatGPT and DALL-E generated image reflecting the symbolic contrast between the structured approach to nuclear programs and the free market capitalism ideology.
But that doesn’t mean I think it’s worth spending a lot of time or money on this decade or next. I think in the end game it will be lucky to be generating 5% of global energy when all energy is electric. That’s up a bit in absolute terms from where it is now, but down quite a bit in terms of relative share of electrical generation, and down a lot in terms of share of low-carbon generation.
In the mid 2000s, this wasn’t exactly a secret. Then the big hope was the industry standardizing on the Westinghouse AP1000. That’s the one that was in the Vogtle and Summer plants, so that didn’t go well. That was the last time the industry thought it was in a renaissance. Wind and solar hadn’t shifted into high gear yet.
The graph has all four forms of generation and is in added TWh of actual new generation per year from the sources. That’s using Chinese capacity factors for all of the technologies. What it shows is that renewables are rapidly increasing their additions of real electricity per year, while nuclear is stagnant. The nuclear program peaked in 2018, and has been limping along at an average of three reactors a year since.
On the one hand, there’s a commercial nuclear strategy. On the other hand, there’s foreign sales of low-carbon generation technologies, mirroring their enormous success with solar panels and batteries, and their growing global success with wind turbines and electric vehicles.