-
Rising Role of Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power is projected to make up 10% of global electricity production by 2025, driven by increasing energy demands from AI, data centers, and major investments from countries like China and tech giants like Amazon and Google.
-
Challenges and Debates: While nuclear energy offers carbon-free operation and reliability, critics highlight its high costs, slow deployment, waste management issues, and safety risks, sparking ongoing debates about its feasibility as a climate solution.
-
Potential of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs): SMRs are touted as a safer and faster alternative to traditional reactors, but their commercial success remains unproven, leaving renewables like solar and wind as the more scalable and cost-effective path for meeting urgent climate goals.
Nuclear energy has long been both praised and criticized as a potential solution to the world’s growing energy demands. As the push to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensifies, the role of nuclear power in the global energy mix has come under renewed scrutiny. On the one hand, nuclear power plants do not emit carbon during operation, making them an attractive option for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. On the other, nuclear energy comes with significant environmental and logistical challenges, from radioactive waste and uranium mining to the risk of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl.
Despite these concerns, nuclear energy is on track to account for nearly 10% of global electricity production in 2025, marking a 30-year high, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Much of this growth is being driven by China, where the rising energy demands of technologies such as artificial intelligence and data centers have spurred new investments in nuclear power. Tech giants, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, have also recently announced plans to integrate nuclear energy into their operations. This marks a shift from their earlier commitments to rely exclusively on renewable energy, signaling a growing recognition of nuclear power as a potentially critical tool in achieving net-zero climate goals.
In Germany, the debate over nuclear energy has resurfaced ahead of the upcoming federal election. The conservative CDU/CSU opposition is calling for further research into nuclear technologies and even exploring the possibility of reactivating decommissioned plants. Friedrich Merz, the CDU’s candidate for chancellor, has described Germany’s nuclear phaseout as a “strategic mistake.” However, he acknowledges that it would be unrealistic to expect previously shuttered reactors to come back online. The far-right Alternative for Germany party has also endorsed nuclear power, framing it as a crucial component of a sustainable energy strategy. Meanwhile, the governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens has ruled out a return to nuclear, citing the long and complex construction process of reactors and their associated indirect emissions.
Proponents of nuclear energy argue that it offers a reliable and carbon-free solution to the intermittency of renewable sources like solar and wind, which depend on weather conditions. Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy, has pointed out that data centers and AI applications require steady, round-the-clock energy that nuclear power is uniquely positioned to provide. This perspective is driving interest in small modular reactors (SMRs), a newer generation of nuclear technology that promises to be safer, cheaper, and faster to deploy than traditional reactors. These smaller reactors, with capacities of less than 300 megawatts, could be built on the sites of former fossil fuel plants and are expected to help meet the surging energy needs of AI and other high-tech industries.
However, the promise of SMRs remains largely theoretical. Only two such reactors, in Russia and China, have been connected to the grid to date, and both projects faced significant delays and cost overruns. Critics argue that the nuclear industry’s history of high costs and slow timelines makes it an unrealistic solution to the urgent climate crisis. Instead, they advocate for a rapid expansion of proven technologies like solar, wind, and energy storage systems, which can be deployed at scale much faster and at lower cost.
At the global level, nuclear energy has been officially recognized as a low-emission technology necessary for meeting climate targets. The 2023 climate summit in Dubai highlighted its potential alongside renewables as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, significant obstacles remain. For nuclear power to play a major role in decarbonization, the world would need to build more than 1,000 new reactors by 2050, a feat that many experts deem impractical. Even with contributions from SMRs, scaling up nuclear capacity to such levels would require extraordinary investment, industrial capacity, and political will.
The broader energy transition will likely depend on a mix of technologies, with renewables expected to dominate due to their lower costs and faster deployment rates. Still, nuclear energy may serve as a valuable complement, offering a stable source of power where renewables alone are insufficient. While the debate continues, the urgency of addressing climate change ensures that nuclear energy will remain a key part of the conversation about how to power a sustainable future.
