A year earlier, Japan had been the world’s third-largest producer of nuclear energy. Nuclear supplied more than a quarter of the nation’s electricity.

Then… nothing. Zero reactors in operation, and not a single kilowatt of energy from nuclear.

It was a knee-jerk reaction to the Fukushima disaster, fully supported by a vast majority of Japanese citizens. And it shot Japan in the foot.

Because it quickly discovered that shutting down nuclear required paying an extra $37 billion a year for imported fossil fuels…

… which led to spiraling electricity prices, extreme government debt, and rising emissions.

In fact, emissions increased 30 percent from 2011 to 2012. And in 2013, Japanese emissions hit an all-time high.

Japan’s climate change goal had been to reduce emissions from electricity production by 25 percent by 2020.

But without nuclear, Japan’s Minister of the Environment was forced to revise that figure… to a 3.1 percent increase.

In early 2021, amidst historic power shortages, Japan’s Energy Minister finally reversed course on the nuclear-free policy. “Nuclear power will be indispensable,” he said.

A new future, indeed.

A year later, the Prime Minister of Japan called for the “maximum use” of nuclear. And he ordered the government to restart idled nuclear plants at an accelerated rate.

Out of Japan’s thirty-three operable nuclear reactors, ten have already been restarted. Sixteen more are slated to be restarted by the end of 2023, and two new reactors will be brought online.

• Not only that, but Japan has begun developing next-generation nuclear reactors.

It’s a momentous policy shift for a country that swore off of nuclear energy just a decade ago.

And it’s a common theme in every country with a major nuclear energy program.

From Japan to Germany to the UK to the U.S., closed nuclear plants are being recommissioned —and those scheduled for closure are remaining open.

But many countries are going even further…

They are transforming from hell-bent on shutting down nuclear to accelerating and even incentivizing the development of new nuclear programs.

Sweden Drinks the Radioactive Kool-Aid

For the last thirty years, Sweden has deliberately created the worst possible environment for nuclear.

In the ‘80s, it made plans to phase out nuclear power generation by 2010.

Then it outright banned nuclear research.

Then it banned restarting closed reactors.

And then it imposed a $0.30/kWh tax on nuclear energy.

In 2006, that tax was doubled… and increased another 25 percent in 2008.

One study put the tax at 60 percent of the operating cost of nuclear reactors in Sweden.

The tax forced two reactors, Ringhals 1 and 2, to close in 2019–2020.

And it was on track to close all three nuclear power plants in Sweden, which provide 30 percent of its electricity.

Vattenfall, a state-owned energy company, said abolishing the tax would decrease its generating costs to $20/MWh by 2021.

In 2022, the average wholesale electricity price in Sweden was $112/MWh.

That’s why 2022 polls showed that 60 percent of the population didn’t just want nuclear to stay—they wanted new reactors to be built.

But the political risk and uncertainty surrounding nuclear investments prevented any company from ever wanting to touch it again.

So when the new government came into power, it released a policy called the “Tidö Agreement.”

The agreement says that nuclear plants must be guaranteed the right to produce carbon-free electricity.

• And if Sweden forces a plant to close, “the owners must be entitled to compensation.”

Then, the government pivoted from taxing nuclear reactors out of existence… to subsidizing them.

The document pledged $40 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power construction—making it far easier for nuclear developers to get commercial funding.

It also called for:

• A removal of the ban on restarting closed reactors.
• Restarting Ringhals 1 and 2.
• A shorter permit process and a fast track for new nuclear power.
• A highly reduced application fee for new nuclear reactors.

None of this is hypothetical. Vattenfall, the previously mentioned major nuclear power company, has already been asked to identify suitable locations for additional nuclear reactors.

China: First in Emissions, First in Nuclear

Sweden is one of only thirty-three countries that currently produce nuclear energy. Thirty more are considering, planning, or starting their own nuclear energy programs.

Belarus, Bangladesh, and Turkey are all building their first nuclear reactors.

A single reactor coming online in Finland will provide 28 percent of its electricity.

But the real demand won’t come from small or developing nations. In fact, nuclear plants produce too much energy for them; if they are taken offline for refueling or maintenance, it could cause blackouts.

That’s why Slovenia and Croatia literally share a nuclear power plant on their border.

• The real demand for nuclear energy will come from rapidly developing countries with high carbon emissions and huge populations.

That makes China, which has the largest and fastest-growing group of energy-consuming humans in history, the perfect candidate for nuclear.

In 2021, China’s electricity demand jumped 10 percent. For context, that’s equal to the total electricity demand of all of Africa.

Which means emissions are exploding. While every other developed country is trying to cut their emissions, China’s have risen by more than 300 percent in the past twenty years.

Right now, more than a third of global CO2 emissions come from China.

They are building out solar and wind, but their real focus is on nuclear.

Thirty years ago, China had zero nuclear power. In 2002, China was 15th in nuclear production in the world.

• 10th in 2007.
• 3rd in 2016.
• 2nd in 2020.

Fitch analysts now predict that China’s nuclear power capacity will overtake the U.S. by 2026.

Nuclear energy capacity in China is precisely following its emissions trajectory—only about a decade later. Which means it won’t stop when it’s #1 in the world.

In just fifteen years, China plans to build 150 nuclear plants, which is more than the U.S. has built—ever.

CNNC, a Chinese nuclear power company, is urging the government to approve a new nuclear project every two months for the next decade.

China plans to get up to 327 GWe by 2050, or more than three times the United States.

China’s population twin, India, is facing the same problem with growing emission—and seeking the same solution.

India Goes Fleet Mode

For its 1.4 billion people—18 percent of the world’s population—India has a measly 6.8 GW of capacity across seven nuclear plants.

It’s an embarrassing 1.7 percent of the country’s total power generation capacity.

Even so, Prime Minister Modi is intent on scaling up nuclear energy as fast as is humanly possible.

In the past fifteen years, nuclear power generation in India has already risen more than 300 percent.

India’s building another 6.6 GW of capacity right now—the most after China.

It has already approved another 8.4 GW of capacity—twelve more reactors—to begin construction in the next three years.

And it has a staggering 31 GW of nuclear builds planned.

Modi plans to triple nuclear capacity again over the next decade. That’s nearly seventy new reactors coming online.

How big could it really get?

• India plans to supply 25 percent of its electricity from nuclear power by 2050.

That would require 100 GW of nuclear—again, more than the U.S.

To facilitate this, India is setting up five massive “Nuclear Energy Parks,” which can handle 10GW at a single location.

By 2032, five of these parks are planned to potentially provide between 40 and 45 GW of carbon-free energy.

Once it gets going, this is hockey-stick growth.

There’s only one problem: India has very little nuclear technology of its own. For that matter, most developed countries don’t—even those with nuclear reactors.

Only five countries on the planet actually have the skills, materials, and supply chain to build nuclear reactors.

And they are all preparing to wage a full-scale war to be able to deliver the world’s most valuable energy to the rest of the planet.

Go to next chapter >

France was heavily dependent on fossil fuels for electricity—but had no reserves of its own. So when OPEC pushed up the price of oil by 400 percent, it threatened to destroy the country.

With little domestic coal or gas, France had zero energy security.

But it did have something else: substantial heavy engineering expertise.

So in 1974, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer made a speech on national TV, declaring a new direction for French energy:

He called for France to go “all nuclear, all electric.”

Construction of the first three nuclear plants under the “Messmer Plan” started in December 1974. They were completed six years later.

• And in just fifteen years, France went from breaking ground to producing electricity at forty-eight nuclear reactors.

France built reactors that quickly by making two smart decisions:

• The forty-eight reactors were made from just five designs.
• They were built at only twelve plants.

That meant standardized processes and greater efficiencies, keeping the price of construction low.

Then France ran into a snag. Messmer’s original plan called for constructing 170 plants by 2000.

• But by 1990, less than fifty nuclear reactors were providing more than 75 percent of France’s energy needs.

France simply had too much power from nuclear, and its nuclear units had to operate at a capacity of only 61 percent.

EDF, the French electricity company, began trying to stimulate electricity demand to soak up spare capacity.

To this day, nuclear power generation in France remains so high that nuclear plants occasionally close for the weekends.

It’s an unbeatable level of energy security.

Not only that, but it accidentally gave France an incredible head-start in the race to net zero.

Because the year Messmer gave his speech, per-capita emissions in France peaked—and they have fallen by 60 percent since then.

France is beating climate change without even trying.

Meanwhile, in Germany…

In 2009, Germany unveiled a plan of its own: the International Climate Initiative. It laid out how the country would switch entirely to renewable energy by 2050.

As with everything German, they came up with a new word for the conversion: “Energiewende.”

The goals for Energiewende were ambitious, including emissions reductions of 80–95 percent and a renewable energy target of 60 percent by 2050.

Energiewende was passed into law in 2010. Germany was celebrated as “The World’s First Major Renewable Energy Economy,” and Germans were proud.

“It’s a gift to the world!” a German analyst bragged to the New York Times.

Curiously, the first source of energy to be eliminated was nuclear—which has zero emissions.

In other words, Energiewende was a perfect counterpoint to the Messmer Plan. It would demonstrate whether energy security and a carbon-free economy could be achieved through renewables alone.

A year later, Fukushima happened. Frightened by the incident, the German government decided to permanently close all nuclear reactors by 2022.

“It’s definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision.”
– German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen

The decision, spearheaded by former German Environment Minister and former nuclear proponent Angela Merkel, was not without its detractors.

In 2011, the New York Times reported predictions that eliminating nuclear could:

• force Germany to import nuclear power from France, or even
• inflate the cost of energy across the continent.

If only they knew…

How It Started Versus How It’s Going

Germany’s renewables costs—for solar panels and wind turbines and biogas plants—were rapidly forced onto consumers.

A study by the OECD found that the cost of household electricity in Germany increased by 50 percent from 2006–2017. And the report came to a surprising conclusion:

• Electricity prices will continue to increase as long as Germany keeps building solar and wind.

Meanwhile, France’s electricity costs are 40 percent lower than Germany’s.

But that’s just because clean energy is more expensive, right?

Wrong. France also produces twice as much of its electricity from clean energy sources as Germany…

… while producing one-fifth the carbon emissions from electricity per capita.

In fact—thanks to Energiewende—German carbon emissions are rising.

• Germany saw its largest rise in CO2 emissions in thirty years last year.

Why? Because as German nuclear was phased out, it was primarily replaced by two electricity sources: coal and imported gas.

In fact, closed coal plants are being restarted to compensate for shuttered nuclear. And Germany is scheduled to open a half-dozen new fossil fuel facilities by the end of 2023.

That’s right.

The nation that Bloomberg says “did more than any other to unleash the modern renewable-energy industry” is actively building CO2 factories.

Meanwhile, the deployment of renewables is falling off a cliff. Wind turbine installation dropped by nearly 60 percent from 2017–2018.

• In 2021, Germany barely installed more wind than in 2000.

It was an echo of solar: Installations of solar panels fell by 85 percent from 2010–2014, and have still not recovered.

But it’s too late: the money has been spent.

Three years ago, Germany’s Federal Court of Auditors found that Energiewende had cost $160 billion over the last five years—an expense that was “in extreme disproportion to results.”

“The Energiewende — the biggest political project since reunification — threatens to fail.” – Der Spiegel

Back to the Nuclear

By 2025, Germany will have spent $580 billion on renewables and related infrastructure.

Yet CO2 emissions in Germany have dropped by less than two percent a year since 2010. They need to drop by six percent every year now to reach the country’s 2030 goals.

So Germany is already setting aside $300 million a year to pay EU emissions fines. At the same time…

France is making $3 billion a year from selling nuclear electricity to other countries.

And it’s ready to double down on nuclear. At COP26, French president Emmanuel Macron made it clear: France would “relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors” to “guarantee our country’s electricity supply.”

In February 2022, Macron announced that France was planning to build six more nuclear reactors… and considering building eight more after that.

It will also extend the life of existing reactors deemed safe and suitable past fifty years.

French electricity company EDF called it the “fastest and most certain path to achieve carbon neutrality.”

Germany has no choice but to follow suit.

In October 2022, it announced that its three remaining nuclear plants would extend operations until April 2023.

Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck said it was a “necessary” step to avoid power grid shortages.

Some lawmakers in Germany are going further—suggesting that decommissioned plants be reopened and new reactors built.

Because reducing carbon emissions is good. But since the Messner Plan, this has always been about one thing: energy security.

And in its quest to gain independence from nuclear, Germany found itself with a new dependency—on Russia.

The “partnership” with Russia was supposed to provide a “mutual dependency intelligently for the future.” It has not looked intelligent thus far.

The results of the trillion-dollar, half-century energy experiment are in: Nuclear won.

And now every country that wants to remain energy independent and go low-carbon is turning toward the only viable solution on the planet: nuclear.

Go to next chapter >

Installing wind and solar increases CO2 emissions.

It’s due in part to something called “The Duck Curve.”

This graph shows how much power California needed from everything except solar, by hour of day, for the last decade:

During the day, solar generates so much electricity that nearly all other sources have to shut down. Otherwise, it risks blowing out the grid.

In the evening, when everyone comes home and needs to use power just as the sun is setting, demand for other sources of power spikes off the charts.

Ordinarily, nuclear would provide a consistent source of power throughout the course of the day.

But nuclear can’t just be shut off during the day when solar takes over, and turned back on at night when the sky goes dark.

So coal, oil, and gas plants have to be used to handle the spike.

• Which means that every solar panel erected requires a fossil fuel plant to work.

Note: Oil and gas companies aren’t stupid. This is exactly why they’re lobbying so heavily for solar and wind.

California is not the only place emissions are rising because renewables are installed. In Germany, the Hambacher Forest is on the verge of being destroyed. Why?

Because it’s sitting on a ton of coal. And since Germany is shutting down nuclear and turning to renewables, it needs to burn more coal to account for peaks in demand.

Sweden thought about replacing its nuclear with wind. It found that every gigawatt of nuclear replaced by wind would require an additional gigawatt of gas-based electricity.

And the buildout would cause Sweden’s CO2 emissions to double.

As renewable energy increases around the world, nuclear plants are forced to shut down…

The same nuclear plants that emit 75 percent less CO2 than solar and 99 percent less than coal.

Oh, and as a bonus—nuclear plants require zero fossil fuel plants in order to run.

Nuclear with uranium doesn’t just win the clean energy and emissions contest with renewables.

In every category that matters to stopping climate change and saving the environment, renewables lose.

Renewables Don’t Hold a Candle to Nuclear

A nuclear reactor can produce about 1 GW of electricity. But that’s not equivalent to 1 GW of installed wind or solar.

Nuclear plants produce energy more than 90 percent of the time. Wind only runs about 35 percent of the time, and solar a measly 25 percent of the time.

That means that three to four times as much wind and solar has to be installed just to produce the same amount of energy as nuclear. Here’s what that difference looks like in real life:

• Eleven nuclear plants in Illinois and Pennsylvania produced more power than all solar in the U.S. in 2021.

In both land and waste, that makes a huge difference for the environment.

Those eleven plants cover about 25 square miles of land total.

Generating the same amount of electricity via solar requires more than 775 square miles—all of it deforested to make room for solar panels.

And wind? It would take more than 4,000 square miles.

In fact, solar and wind require so much land that countries like Japan would need to cover every last square inch of free land with solar to fully power the country.

But that’s not wind and solar’s biggest problem. Because unlike their name, renewables don’t last forever.

Solar panels have to be replaced every thirty years, resulting in staggering amounts of waste.

The International Renewable Energy Agency expects that by 2050, the world will have accumulated 78 million tons of solar power waste.

• Solar will generate 300 times as much waste by 2050 as nuclear has since 1950.

Wind is no better. More than 720,000 tons of 150-foot blades are expected to be dumped in landfills in the next two decades.

The high material requirements and low capacity of renewables present a little life-threatening problem:

They can never be built fast enough to save the earth.

Rising Tides Sink All Boats

In 1995, 7.2 percent of electricity in the U.S. was generated by renewables. A quarter century later, that had risen to… just 12.4 percent.

It took a twenty-five years to increase renewables as a portion of electricity by five percent.

For the record, it took three years for nuclear to make a similar move, from ’74-’77.

On its current trajectory, it will take renewables another twenty years to catch up to nuclear as a percentage of electricity generation.

And it would take a century for the U.S. to get to 50 percent renewables.

In fact, renewables aren’t even covering increases in demand right now.

• Global energy demand increased by 600 percent more than renewable energy consumption in 2021.

In an open letter, professors at MIT, Columbia, and the Carnegie Institution wrote:

Renewables… cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires….
In the real world, there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.

The OECD agrees. It projects that to meet emissions goals, nuclear needs to produce 9,000 TWh a year by 2050, which will cost about $8 trillion.

That’s assuming wind and solar can produce about the same amount of energy by then… at a cost of about $20 trillion.

The world would save $12 trillion by using nuclear instead of renewables.

It doesn’t matter what angle it is… emissions, waste, land, cost…

In the fight against climate change, nuclear is the only renewable worth a watt.

Our Newest Renewable

Yes, nuclear is a renewable—arguably the only real renewable other than hydro.

Unlike wind and solar, nuclear generates the only waste from electricity production that is safely contained.

And used nuclear fuel still has about a hundred times more energy than was extracted from it. Reprocessing that fuel enables it to be used again… and again.

France, Russia, and Japan already re-use their nuclear fuel, getting more energy out of it each time.

As additional reactors that can use reprocessed fuel come online, nuclear waste will become worth billions of dollars.

Fourth-generation nuclear reactors called “breeders” could extract almost all of the energy from uranium—99x more than is currently used—without the fuel ever leaving the reactor.

There are also about 4.5 billion tons of uranium floating in the ocean.

When uranium is extracted from seawater for clean energy production, more uranium is leached from rocks to replace it to the same concentration.

And those rocks hold 100 trillion tons of uranium, a super massive source of clean energy.

• So if nuclear provided 100 percent of earth’s energy for a billion years… uranium wouldn’t run out.

That makes it roughly as renewable as solar and wind.

Only with minimal waste, small land requirements, and zero additional CO2 emissions.

Governments are already recognizing that uranium is a clean, renewable source of energy.

The EU has taken the first step, stating that nuclear power will qualify as a green investment starting in 2023.

The state of Utah passed their Renewable Energy Development Act, which defined nuclear power as a form of renewable energy.

As nuclear gains renewable status, utilities will be able to use it to meet their renewable electricity regulations.

Policies will change, and massive tax incentives will be rolled out to build nuclear power plants. Uranium will be on top of the clean energy options.

And soon—unlike with wind and solar—the world’s CO2 emissions will begin to fall.

Go to next chapter >

Here’s what they’re not considering: fossil fuels produce two-thirds of electricity in the world.

And it has waste, too. Only it’s not measured in mere tons, like nuclear waste.

• The waste from coal and oil electricity is measured in giga tons— that’s billions of tons.

And its waste is far more harmful to the environment on a mass scale than nuclear waste.

In fact, the waste from oil and coal is causing the single greatest existential threat of our time: climate change.

CO2 emissions have turned our earth into a hothouse—one from which we might not escape.

Heat waves are hotter, happen more often, and last longer than they used to.

Fires are roaring across countries… rivers are drying up… hurricanes and floods are levelling cities.

This climate change crisis will lead to the loss of lives and is costing trillions.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, like the disappearance of sea ice, the collapse of ecosystems, and global weather refugees, it’s going to take more than just a decrease in emissions.

We must fully decarbonize the entire global electricity sector, eliminating the 36 GT of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere every year.

And we’ve got less than three decades to do it before a reversal becomes impossible.

To achieve complete decarbonization, countries have spent the last decade “going green”, targeting “net zero” and slashing carbon-emitting sources.

Yet despite the efforts of most of the developed world, CO2 emissions have stubbornly kept increasing.

Emissions By Any Other Name

In fact, in the past forty years, we’ve only seen three years with emissions decreases:

• once during the Global Financial Crisis,
• once during COVID,
• and a tiny 0.1 GT decrease in 2015.

In 2021, immediately following the pandemic, global CO2 emissions snapped back to their highest level in history… with the biggest emissions increase in history.

Scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the chances of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees are getting extremely slim.

How did we get so far off track? One simple reason:

• The world is playing a massive cup-and-balls trick that nets the world zero gains in the fight on climate change.

Take California, for example.

It’s requiring 100 percent of all energy sold to be clean by 2045. And to get there, and to a net zero target, it’s cutting a perfectly good carbon-free source of energy: nuclear.

In fact, it’s cut nuclear power by 50 percent over the past decade. Guess what made up a large chunk of the difference…

Natural gas.

Now—by its own estimate—California needs to deploy wind and solar at five times its average pace… for the next twenty years straight, just to meet its 2045 goal.

Here’s the thing. Nuclear electricity production is already emissions free. So even if California successfully replaced all of its carbon-free nuclear energy with wind and solar, there would be zero emissions reduction.

It’s not just California. Michigan shuttered a huge nuclear plant, killing with it the hopes of a net zero or zero-carbon state economy by 2050.

It’s a trend around the world, spurred on by Fukushima in 2011.

Before the incident, Japan planned to reduce its emissions by 20 percent from 1990–2020.

Instead, it nearly doubled its use of coal and natural gas from 2009–2013—using it for more than 90 percent of its electricity generation. As a result, Japan’s CO2 emissions shot up 15 percent.

Germany followed Japan’s lead, announcing in 2011 that it would shut down all of its nuclear plants and replace them with renewables.

It was a lie. Germany’s nuclear power has been almost entirely replaced by natural gas.

And that’s why emissions refuse to fall…

“We’re Cooked”

Far from reducing emissions—or even keeping them the same—for every reactor that is forced to shut down, CO2 emissions rise by 5.8 MT a year.

• That’s the equivalent of filling an NFL stadium to the brim with gas, and setting it on fire.

We’d need to install solar panels on one million homes just to make up for shuttering a single reactor.

Nuclear reactors are extremely efficient, low-carbon sources of energy. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether it’s replacing coal or natural gas…

• Nuclear is nearly 100 percent more effective than any other energy technology at reducing CO2 emissions.

There is simply no achieving net zero without nuclear.

That’s why a letter from scientists at Carnegie, MIT, and Columbia said:

“Continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Or MIT scientists and NASA researchers…

Nuclear “will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them.”

A report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe made it as clear as possible:

“International climate objectives will not be met if nuclear power is excluded.”

Here’s the reality:

• The only countries in the world that have broken the fossil fuel addiction and transitioned to low-carbon power have done so with the aid of nuclear.

That’s why more than a dozen countries have said that nuclear power will play a crucial role in reducing their emissions.

Right now, a giant U-turn is happening around the world to add nuclear—fast—to achieve net zero by 2050.

The question is: How much nuclear does the world need to stay alive?

Nuclear Civilization, or No Civilization

The International Energy Agency says global nuclear capacity needs to increase by 130 percent by 2050 to meet climate change goals.

Their net-zero emissions scenario sees one new plant being added every ten days within a decade.

“In today’s context . . . nuclear power has a unique opportunity to stage a comeback.”
– IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol

The IPCC goes even further. In the eighty-nine scenarios they considered, nuclear generation increases by an average of 250 percent.

That means roughly 1,000 new nuclear plants built in the next twenty-five years.

The Harmony Programme proposes about 1,250 new nuclear plants, to allow for retirements. That would provide 25 percent of electricity around the world, all carbon-free.

Some say we don’t have time for nuclear anymore—”It takes too long to build.” They’re wrong.

South Korea is building plants in four years, and they’ve got eight under construction right now.

If a tiny country can do that, imagine what a mobilization of the entire world would bring about.

An average of twenty reactors per year started up globally from 1975–1985.

A single nuclear reactor produces about 9 TWh of energy a year, and the world uses about 24,000 TWh of energy a year.

• That means if we had kept building the same old plants at the same old pace . . . we would have hit net-zero around 2000.

As it stands, we have thirty years left. And right now, fifty-six reactors are under construction.

For context, that’s more than the net addition of nuclear power since 1985.

More than 300 reactors are planned—and counting.

Avoiding a total climate meltdown is the hardest challenge the world has ever faced.

But with nuclear, we’ll beat it.

Go to next chapter >

The internet didn’t exist back then.

Even computer screens had barely been invented.

The instant you began arguing, Netflix’s massive multi-billion market cap would laugh you out of the room.

Yet that’s precisely the situation today for nuclear.

When a researcher at The Breakthrough Institute started investigating arguments against nuclear based on price, she discovered something interesting.

The majority of the research was based on nuclear construction… from the ‘70s.

So she decided to do her own study—and unsurprisingly found that construction costs are extremely different now.

Same goes for safety and waste figures. The numbers used to argue against nuclear are all from the ‘70s—with predictably inaccurate results.

Here’s the problem: a grand total of zero nuclear reactors currently operating in the U.S. started construction after 1978.

Meanwhile, nuclear has evolved just as much as computers have in the past fifty years.

Take something called “capacity factor,” for example. It measures uptime for energy sources.

A capacity factor of 100 percent means a nuclear plant is generating energy 24/7.

In the ‘70s, nuclear was just starting up. Operational difficulties that caused unplanned outages were common.

The capacity factor was about 50 percent—so that’s the number often used to compare nuclear to energy sources like wind and solar.

Guess what it is now…

• In 2021, U.S. nuclear capacity factor was 93 percent.

… nearly double what it was thirty years ago.

In fact, the capacity factor has increased so much over the past thirty years, that even though fifteen nuclear reactors have shut down in the U.S….

The total power produced annually by nuclear has increased by nearly 25 percent.

The other contributor to total power generated from nuclear is “uprating”—adding additional capacity to existing reactors.

Here’s how powerful that can be:

• Two reactors in Finland started in 1978 and 1980 at 660 MWe.
• Thirty years later, they were rated at 880 MWe—a 30 percent increase.
• The operator, TVO, is planning to uprate them again, this time to 1,000 MWe.

In fact, TVO uses uprating to always have forty years of remaining lifetime on their plants.

And that’s another major evolution of nuclear power no one saw coming…

Rise of the Planet of the Octogenarians

When nuclear reactors were just getting traction in the ‘60s, they needed investors. And investors needed to know how long these plants would be pumping out energy.

So for amortization purposes, they chose… say, forty years.

Around the turn of the century, nuclear plants started to hit their fortieth birthdays.

And in March 2000, the Calvert Cliffs plant received the first twenty-year license extension.

Since then, 96 percent of the fleet in the U.S. has been granted extensions to operate sixty years.

Now they’re hitting the sixty-year mark… and they aren’t slowing down.

So in 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a second twenty-year extension for the Surry plant in Virginia built in 1972.

It will now be able to operate until 2052—a lifetime of eighty years.

Fifteen more reactors have applied for extensions, with more expected.

• Extremely long-term nuclear plant operations are not the exception. They’re the norm.

There’s no limit to the number of times a license can be extended, provided the NRC decides the reactor is safe to continue operations.

And the NRC is now preparing to authorize nuclear plants for up to 100 years.

Why are license extensions so important? It’s because nuclear is compared to other forms of energy using a levelized cost of energy (LCOE).

• Since the costs of nuclear power are front-loaded, a mere twenty-year extension means the LCOE of nuclear drops 50 percent.

Add in capacity factor increases…

And the LCOE drop is more like 65 percent.

The past ten years have brought another 35 percent drop in nuclear LCOE for a twenty-year extension:

That brings the LCOE down to near $30/MWh.

• In other words, nuclear operations in the U.S. are 30 percent cheaper than wind is now.

Here’s the thing:

The increased capacity, the increased output, and the increased longevity is all on Generation II reactors.

And those aren’t the ones being built today.

The Gen III Max Plus

In the late ‘90s, Japan built the first Generation III reactor, beginning a new era for nuclear.

Gen III reactors carefully incorporate lessons from Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. That makes them safer, stronger, cleaner, less expensive, and easier to build than Gen II reactors.

For example, if a station completely blacks out, “passive nuclear safety” takes over, ensuring the fuel remains cooled.

These improvements make Gen IIIs 1,600 times less likely to experience a severe accident than previous reactors.

Another technology turns potentially explosive gases into water without using electricity—which helps keep radioactivity in the reactor in case of a meltdown.

So even if there is core damage, the probability of a severe radioactivity release is 10 times less than it used to be…

• Studies have found that Gen III nuclear reactors are so strong that they could withstand being rammed into by a fully fueled Boeing 767.

European manufacturers have now created a reactor design called the EPR—or Evolutionary Power Reactor.

It’s one of the first Generation III+ designs, and it’s built to be indestructible.

It has:

• F that can provide cooling for up to three years after shutdown.
• A “core catcher” that traps and cools the hot core if it escapes the reactor.
• Two layers of concrete walls that are a total of eight feet thick.

EPRs are huge—output is up to 1,650 MWe, or 70 percent more than most U.S. reactors.

Oh, and they use nearly 20 percent less uranium per MW than older reactors.

The first Gen III+ started up operations in 2017, followed in rapid succession by reactors in China, Finland, France, and the UK.

From Evolution to Revolution

A group of fourteen countries around the world are already developing advanced Gen IV reactors.

If Gen III+ reactors are evolutionary, Gen IV reactors are nothing short of revolutionary.

For example, American companies are working on “walk away” safety: nuclear reactors that need zero backup power or external cooling in case of an accident.

And Gen IV isn’t a pipe dream.

China’s already started up the first Gen IV reactor—a model that can’t melt down.

More than a dozen other large reactor designs are being developed.

More importantly, more than seventy reactor designs are under development for SMRs—Small Modular Reactors.

“Modular” means that the components can be built in a factory, instead of on-site.

• SMR production is easily scalable, and costs plummet as production rises.

In the future, SMRs could be produced at the same scale as airplanes.

The reactor is small enough to be brought to the nuclear plant on a truck.

They produce about ¼ as much power as a regular reactor, and some are designed to operate for thirty years before refueling.

• A 300 MWe SMR plant can be built in under four years.

Once built, it can follow electricity demand, cutting from 100 percent power to 40 percent in just twenty minutes.

SMRs are currently being licensed or constructed in five of the six top nuclear-producing countries in the world.

TerraPower, a company founded by Bill Gates, is installing its first SMR in a small Wyoming coal town.

Why there?

Because it can use the existing infrastructure and workforce of the coal plant that’s retiring in 2025. The same land, the same connections, the same office buildings—saving up to 35 percent of the cost.

• In just a couple years, that single SMR is set to provide enough carbon-free energy to power 345 small towns.

Today’s nuclear is worlds apart from the nuclear of fifty years ago.

Old plants have improved. New designs have been built. New moonshot approaches are actually working.

Waste is dropping, reactors are becoming safer, and the price is going down.

Around the world, rapid learning is taking place that will enable nuclear to radically expand.

All the industry needs to blow up is a catalyst.

And that catalyst…

It’s here.

Go to next module >

Even long-term, there’s just not much radioactive waste to worry about—especially compared with other forms of electricity generation.

• All civilian nuclear waste produced in the U.S. since 1950 would fit on a football field at a depth of thirty feet.

The coal used by the U.S. would fill that same space 2.5 times, every day.

The world generates about 8,000 tons of nuclear waste annually. That’s only 1/10 the weight of the Washington Monument.

As little as there is however, it still needs a safe, long-term solution.

You see, high-level nuclear waste—the really dangerous stuff—is extremely hot and radioactive. And the only way it becomes harmless to humans is time. Lots of time.

Which means countries need to take their time to get waste storage right—the first time.

That’s why countries like China, Finland, Sweden, and the U.S. have spent the last forty years studying disposal methods. And they’ve figured it out.

Waste Not, Want Not

The first problem with nuclear waste is cooling it down and keeping it away from people.

Spent nuclear fuel comes conveniently in the form of thin, solid rods that are relatively easy to store.

After being removed from a reactor, these rods are placed in giant, steel-lined concrete pools that provide cooling and shielding. A few years later, much of the heat and radioactivity has dissipated.

The used fuel can then be moved to dry storage in welded, steel-reinforced concrete above-ground canisters.

After about fifty years there—by which time the radioactivity has declined—the canisters can be easily transferred to a permanent storage site.

Dry storage in the U.S. did not begin until 1986.

That means it has another fifteen years or so until a permanent solution needs to be ready.

• Fortunately, the country found the solution has already been found: in the earth itself.

In the far, far north of Canada lies the Athabasca Basin. It’s one of the biggest and highest-grade uranium deposits known to man.

Most of it is UO2—uranium dioxide—which serves as nuclear reactor fuel. The ultra-high-grade ore is safe from water by a “dome” of clay.

Even though the deposit has been in permeable sandstone for more than 100,000 years… it’s gone nowhere.

Multiple ice ages, continental drift, and even mountain formation have come and gone.

Its chemical or radioactive signature is undetectable from the surface.

In other words, it’s the perfect solution for long-term waste disposal: a deep geological repository (DGR). Already, more than a dozen countries have chosen it as their nuclear waste management solution.

The First Reverse Mine

Onkalo—meaning “pit” in Finnish—is scheduled to begin operations in Finland in 2024.

It will be the first permanent disposal site for high-level civilian nuclear waste in the world.

Tunnels got dig one-third of a mile into the earth’s surface, all the way down to the bedrock.

• The used fuel are in boron steel canisters.
• Those canisters will be enclosed in copper capsules.
• The copper capsules will be buried in the tunnel floor.
• The holes dug will be plugged with a water-absorbing clay.
• Then the tunnels will be filled with bentonite and sealed with concrete.

Come global warming or another ice age, it will be the fuel’s final resting place.

Now you might be thinking…

Easy for Finland—they must have only a small amount of waste!

• But Finland will get 60% of their power from nuclear—second only to France.

Even so, the single new DGR is not expected to be filled until 2120, a century after operations begin.

Sweden is next in line, and they’re following the exact pattern set by Finland.

8,000 tonnes of nuclear waste—everything Sweden has generated since the 1970—will be underground, one-third of a mile into the earth.

The final project will cost only $2 billion.

“This is the result of 40 years of research and it will be safe for 100,000 years.”
– Sweden Environment Minister Annika Strandhall

Just like how a large company would do it, Sweden let communities compete for the chance at the jobs and money that follow large construction projects.

France has already selected a suitable site for a DGR, and the UK and Canada are in the process of doing so.

The United States, however, is a different story.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Nuclear Waste

Most of the spent fuel in the United States is in dry casks or pools at more than seventy nuclear reactors across the country.

The Department of Energy is considering consolidating all of it into a federal short-term storage facility.

They’d use consent-based siting, just like Sweden.

In late 2021, the Office of Nuclear Energy took a first step toward establishing such a repository.

The NRC found that either nuclear reactors or a federal facility will provide safe storage for waste for at least the next century.

The Department of Energy found that a permanent nuclear waste disposal facility would cost a staggering $31 billion.

Fortunately, the government has been collecting money from consumers just for that—since the ‘80s. And so far, they’ve got $44 billion.

Now it’s just a matter of identifying a place. But they might not have to, because there might not be any waste remains to store.

Here’s why…

Current nuclear facilities use only about 1 percent of the energy stored in the uranium.

• Reprocessing the fuel enables it to be used again. And again.

That means much of the used fuel currently in storage is not actually waste.

Canadian reactors, for example, can actually burn spent fuel from U.S. reactors. And once used, fuel from the Canadian reactors is only dangerous for about a thousand years—not 100,000.

France has taken it a step further, and nearly closed the fuel cycle. Their reprocessing of spent fuel results in only 4 percent waste.

The other 96% is reused in the reactor.

Anti-nuclear activists love to say that nuclear has no long-term solution to its waste.

In fact, nuclear may be the only energy technology on the planet with a complete long-term solution for every. last. molecule.

Go to next chapter >

Fukushima is the BEST Possible Advertisement for Nuclear Power and its Safety.

About a decade ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists broadcasted an urgent request to U.S. citizens.

They were to write their governors and congress people to demand one thing: improved nuclear safety.

Sounds like a noble pursuit, in theory.

Except that in all of U.S. history…

In fact, nuclear is the safest industry in the entire United States. Working in a nuclear plant is safer than working in a library.

That’s not particularly easy to improve on.

Yet there remains a widespread misconception that nuclear plants are ticking time bombs, just waiting to level an entire city.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Large-scale nuclear accidents generally involve a nuclear meltdown, which safety is simply due to damage to a nuclear reactor core from overheating.

Two really improbable things have to happen for a meltdown to occur:

• A loss of coolant or coolant pressure to the core, allowing it to heat up.
• A complete failure of both Emergency Core Cooling Systems (ECCS).

In the nearly 20,000 years of combined nuclear operations, there have only been three core meltdowns.

When a meltdown occurs, the danger is not from the core itself. No, it’s not going to melt all the way through to China.

The real danger is from radioactive particles escaping from the reactor.

Fortunately, the release of radioactive matter is generally reduced by the nuclear infrastructure that remains after the meltdown. Except, of course, if the infrastructure that should be there – isn’t.

That’s exactly what happened at the most famous (and worst) nuclear meltdown in history: Chernobyl.

A Rocket without a Windshield

In early 1986, inexperienced personnel attempted an experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.

The plant itself was a particularly cheap, shoddy design.

All other reactor types have a crucial containment dome. It’s a massive, thick steel-and-concrete “lid” that keeps radioactive material inside the nuclear plant if anything goes wrong.

Not having one is like building a rocket that doesn’t have seatbelts, or a windshield.

The perfect combination of untrained personnel, shoddy design, and deliberate violation of safety rules meant that the nuclear experiment went very, very wrong.

The meltdown it triggered caused a chain of explosions—then a massive fire. The fire spewed at least five percent of the reactor core into the surrounding countryside.

It was the largest uncontrolled civilian release of radioactive material in history.

Unlike the nuclear plant, the Soviet Union kept a tight lid on what was happening.

It wasn’t until nuclear workers all the way in Sweden identified high levels of radiation that the Soviet Union was forced to admit the accident had happened.

By then, ten days had passed.

• By every measure, it was the worst possible handling of a nuclear accident.

While what happened was horrible, the official number of deaths directly attributed to the accident is about thirty.

But what about radiation exposure for people near the plant?

More than 200,000 “liquidators,” Soviet citizens, helped with recovery and cleanup of the accident site.

Those who were exposed to 100 millisieverts of radiation—the average for a Chernobyl liquidator—saw their mortality risk increase by 0.4 percent.

If you live with someone who smokes cigarettes, you increase your mortality risk by 1.7 percent.

Even today, the people living around Chernobyl get about as much radiation exposure as people in Colorado, where there’s low-level radiation from granite.

“Where Probability Says We Shouldn’t Be”

A quarter-century after Chernobyl, an 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, shifting the entire country a dozen feet east.

Many Japanese nuclear plants had only been built to handle an earthquake with only one-fifth of that magnitude.

Yet none of the eleven reactors in the region suffered any damage.

And in Fukushima, Japan, everything functioned perfectly as planned. Systems detected the earthquake and shut down the reactors. When the power went out, diesel generators kicked in to keep the cores cool.

Soon after the earthquake, a forty-two-foot wave slammed into the coast of Japan. It swept over the sea wall in front of Daiichi, killing the emergency generators… and the backup generators.

A second tsunami hit eight minutes later.

Fortunately, the battery-powered backup of backup generators at Fukushima kicked in, and the cores remained cool—all according to plan.

Eventually, they also failed, resulting in the first and only triple nuclear meltdown in history: All three cores rapidly overheated.

Due to the containment domes, fallout from the accident remained limited.

• There were no reported deaths or cases of radiation sickness in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima.

And of the more than 200 workers who continued to mitigate damages on the site, not a single one died from radiation.

Overall, the loss of life expectancy in the town most affected by Fukushima… was less than that experienced by a London resident from air pollution.

To Sum It All Up…

A crumbling, outdated nuclear plant with poor safety features was hit by the fourth-largest recorded earthquake, then a forty-foot wall of water.

• The electricity supply
• The cooling system stopped functioning.
• The reactors melted down and exploded.

And it killed fewer people than operations at an average coal plant does every single year—when everything goes according to plan.

Fukushima is the best possible advertisement for nuclear power.

Scrams Go Away

The only civilian nuclear meltdown on U.S. soil was at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in early 1979. The ECCS was turned off, which led to a partial melting of the core—almost no radioactive material escaped.

While the accident destroyed a billion-dollar reactor, it did not harm people nearby, either during the incident or in the aftermath.

• Total number of deaths from Three Mile Island: zero.

More than a dozen studies conducted since the accident have shown that the amount of radiation released was too small to even measure the health effects.

But just to be safe, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) quickly established the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). Its job was to help provide training for nuclear plant operators.

The efforts of the INPO have steadily made nuclear energy safer and more reliable for the past forty years.

One of the best measures of nuclear safety is called a “scram.” A scram is an automated shutdown that occurs if necessary to prevent damage to the core.

Control rods are inserted into the core, causing all nuclear reactions to stop.

A scram takes a total of about three seconds.

In 1985, there were 530 scrams in U.S. nuclear reactors.

By 2021, there were only 37—a 93 percent decrease.

Nuclear By Any Other Name

But that’s not important. Because the question is not whether nuclear reactors have a perfect safety record.

Like every source of energy, nuclear is dangerous, and it can cause injury or death.

But are other sources of energy safer?

When Japan halted nuclear production after Fukushima, guess what replaced it.

Not renewables.

Mostly coal and gas.

In two years, Japan started eight new coal-fired power plants, with plans for the biggest coal-power expansion in any developed nation.

Nobel Prize physicist Burton Richter estimated t he years of life lost due to energy sources in Japan.

For nuclear—including the losses attributed to the Fukushima accident—it’s 30 years per TWh.

For coal? 142.

About 20,000 premature deaths are expected over the seventy years following Chernobyl. Compare that to the estimated number of deaths each year from fossil fuel pollution, as identified by Harvard researchers: 8 million.

• Burning fossil fuels creates another Chernobyl—every single day ad. space

The fact is that even first-generation nuclear reactors are an order of magnitude safer than every other fuel source.

Americans will write their congress people, certainly.

But they’ll be begging for nuclear.

Go to next chapter >

You see, it doesn’t matter how expensive nuclear is; it matters how cheap other energy is. When the oil crisis of the early 1970s hit, 82% of electricity was generated using either fossil fuels such as coal.Overnight, the price of both oil and coal increased by 100 percent.

Utilities eagerly placed orders for turnkey nuclear plants.

It seemed to be the answer to all their problems.

And it was, for a while.

When fossil fuel prices were sky-high, nations were rationing oil, and coal was outrageously expensive, the nuclear power buildouts paid off handsomely.

Only the utilities didn’t count on the oil crisis causing electricity demand growth to slow sharply. At the same time they had to increase prices, no one wanted their product.

That’s the same time as when nuclear construction prices started to spiral out of control due to new regulations and ways looking for clean energy. Utilities found themselves stuck between a rock and a very hard place:

• Go bankrupt due to high fuel prices, or
• Go bankrupt due to high nuclear construction costs.

Then the prices of oil and coal started to fall, and fall some more—from 1980 all the way through 1985.

Utilities quickly switched to building fossil fuel plants again.

Not a single new reactor began construction in the United States from 1980–2010.

Instead, coal and natural gas dominated—and CO2 emissions were off the charts and the option for a clean energy like nuclear melts into thin air.

The world built a decades-long addiction to cheap, dirty energy that became nearly impossible to break.

Freaking Fracking

In the mid-2000s, natural gas prices were rising. Popular opinion held that the U.S. was going to severely limit CO2 emissions.

And all those nuclear plants built in the ‘70s suddenly looked appetizing again.

Their operating costs averaged only $0.02/kWh.

An efficient combined-cycle plant was running four to five times as much… just for the fuel.

In that market, nuclear was king.

• Every GW of capacity—about the size of a single reactor—was spinning out up to half a billion every year.

That lasted for four glorious years, from 2004–2008.

Utilities took note.

From 2007–2009, thirteen companies applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for construction and operating licenses to build twenty-six new nuclear reactors.

For context, that’s 25 percent of the U.S. current nuclear reactor base in just two years.

Then it was de ja vu all over again. The Global Financial Crisis reduced the demand for natural gas, causing prices to plummet.

Then in the early 2010s, a new technology called “fracking” made natural gas much cheaper than nuclear. This forced plants offline.

By 2013, most of the new nuclear applications had been abandoned. Natural gas electricity was about 4 cents per kwh, versus 10 cents for nuclear.

In the northeastern United States, electricity prices fell more than 50 percent from 2008–2016.

A study by MIT in 2015 showed that the current price trajectory of electricity made about two-thirds of nuclear power in the U.S. uneconomical—forcing about 20 percent into early retirement.

In 2019, Exelon announced that it would close one of its nuclear reactors in Pennsylvania unless it received subsidies. Why?

Because cheap natural gas sliced regional electricity prices in half. That meant Pennsylvania’s nine nuclear reactors (which power 33 percent of the state) were quickly becoming unprofitable.

Natural Gas Is Out; Nuclear Is In

The subsidy request is not far-fetched.

Wind and solar already received massive federal subsidies, which is part of what makes them competitive with nuclear.

Nuclear is the only form of energy that is not being valued by the market for its low emissions and extreme reliability. Fortunately—despite the best attempts of oil and gas companies at stopping them—politicians in several states are rewriting the rules.

• “Zero-emission credits” are being created so the market accounts for the value of carbon-free, clean energy like nuclear.

And the federal government created a $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program last year to help preserve the existing nuclear infrastructure in the U.S.

In the end, the subsidies might not even be necessary.

In the last three years, natural gas has spiked 400%—most of that before 2022. It’s at its highest level in thirteen years.

It was at $8 when all those applications were filed, then dropped as low as $2 in 2019.

Now natural gas is back at $8.

Meanwhile, coal has risen from $50 a ton to $400 a ton in just two years.

Energy prices in the EU are already far beyond extremely expensive nuclear plants.

In fact, natural gas increases have pushed prices in the UK to $225 per MWh for the first time in fifteen years. And that’s in the summer, when energy demand is about 50 percent lower than the winter.

That’s about double the price the UK government guaranteed to pay a French company building a reactor in England.

• In other words, they’d get an immediate discount on energy just by building more nuclear reactors.

So that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

In 2000, nuclear power supplied about 10% of the U.K.’s electricity. It was 20% in 2020 and they’re going to take it to 25%.

They’ve set up a new organization called Great British Nuclear. Its purpose is to ensure every new nuclear plant is built faster than the last.

In the future, it won’t matter how cheap other energy is.

Nuclear will be even cheaper than any clean energy.

And best of all, it will be carbon-free.

Go to next chapter >

• Over the course of building twenty-eight reactors from 1971–2008, the average cost decreased by 50 percent.

In fact, that decline is similar to Germany’s experience with solar panel pricing over the same period.

France experienced a similar performance, with nuclear construction costs dropping from 1960–1970.

After that, costs remained relatively level as they built out a nuclear fleet that powers more than 70 percent of the country.

So the United States—the nuclear power pioneer—should be building nuclear plants cheaper than anyone else, right? Also wrong.

In fact, a few years ago, two reactors in South Carolina were cancelled after their estimated price tag skyrocketed from $9.8 billion to $25 billion.

This year, two reactors under construction in Georgia saw their expected costs pushed once again—this time, to $30.3 billion.

The massive amounts of carbon-free electricity generated by nuclear power is coveted by utilities, just not with massive price tags attached. They believe that nuclear energy and net zero are so compatible. And they seemed to be right.

But here’s the thing: even the starting price tags on those U.S. nuclear reactors have risen by hundreds of percent over the past few decades.

Now, nuclear is not expensive on its own. And most of the plants that are in operation now were relatively cheap when they were built. In fact, in the early days of nuclear, prices were on a steady downward trend similar to that of wind and solar.

As each successive nuclear reactor was built, the price naturally dropped.

That’s due to a natural phenomenon known as the “learning rate.”

First-Mover Disadvantage

A learning rate is the rate at which a technology decreases in cost as it increases in use.

For example, a learning rate of 10% means that every time installed capacity doubles, the price drops by 10%.

Until 1970, the learning rate for nuclear in the United States was a fantastic 23 percent. In other countries, it was high as 35%.

• If those learning rates had continued through 2015, nuclear reactors would be less than one-tenth of their current cost.

And if the accelerated deployment of nuclear through the mid-‘70s had continued…

• Nuclear would have replaced the U.S.’s entire coal and gas-powered electricity by 2015 and help the country’s race to net zero.

It also would have avoided more than 150 GT of CO2 emissions, as well as about ten million deaths from that pollution.

Only it didn’t. Because sometime around 1970, the learning rate broke. And the price started to rise for every additional reactor built.

Suddenly, learning rates around the world became negative—the United States dropped to – 94%.

Part of the problem was that too many nuclear plants were being built at once.

Demand for nuclear plants skyrocketed in the late ‘60s, causing supply chain issues for both skilled craftsmen and huge, complex nuclear reactor components.

Prices on even simple parts and labor skyrocketed.

More importantly, if a part or worker was unavailable when they were needed, construction was delayed. And since utilities were financing the debt, every additional day meant additional millions of dollars in interest.

But that’s only part of the picture.

A New Expensive Point of View

In the early days of nuclear, every project was “First of a Kind”—or FOAK.

No manufacturer or developer had experience building new nuclear reactors.

• In fact, the first nuclear reactors in Israel and Pakistan were built by a manufacturer of bowling equipment.

So with dozens of plants being brought online all at once, it was a time of learning the wrong way to do things. Then implementing insanely expensive fixes to plants still under construction.

For example, tectonic plates weren’t even discovered until 1967. Suddenly, dozens of plants under construction had to be retroactively earthquake-proofed.

Reactors being built in the 1970s in the U.S. were in an environment of constant change that made controlling or even knowing costs impossible.

Each new snag or accident at an operating reactor introduced a new regulation or standard.

• Between 1970 and 1978, the number of engineering standards nuclear plants had to abide by soared from 400 to more than 1,800.
• During the same time period, regulatory guides and positions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission increased from 4 to… 304.

Every time a new guide or standard was released, every reactor under construction had to be brought up to code.

And every minor change risked a “ripple effect” that could force an overhaul of entire related systems.

For example, the David-Besse reactor was budgeted for $136 million when construction started in 1967; when it was finished a decade later, the price tag was $650 million.

A study found that modifications (and their chain effects) forced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were responsible for more than $400 million of that cost.

While the learning curve may have broken, this was the system working.

As operating experience built up, reactors became insanely safe—in fact, the safest form of energy on the planet.

The Nuclear Bomb for Nuclear Power

Then the real bomb dropped.

A partial meltdown of a reactor at the Three-Mile Island (TMI) plant in 1979 threw the entire nuclear industry and its net zero potential into disarray.

Overnight, the construction costs and timelines of nuclear plants spiraled out of control.

For the fifty-one reactors under construction when TMI occurred, regulatory delays and retrofit requirements were everywhere.

Median costs soared nearly 300 percent—more than $7,000/kW for some reactors.

Applications for new nuclear reactors evaporated instantly.

And more than 120 reactor orders were cancelled—more than the entire current U.S. nuclear fleet.

With no new reactors being built, the learning rate was completely dead.

And the price of nuclear construction had no way of going down.

From the mid-‘80s until now, every nuclear project has been another ultra-high-cost FOAK.

But here’s the good news: The United States is beginning to return to its pre-disruption deployment and learning rates.

• And the learning curve is quickly restarting in the United States.

As new constructions rise, the cost is already dropping and is set to drop more than 30 percent from 2015–2030.

If the U.S. invests about $1 trillion into nuclear energy by 2050, it could supply more than 3,500TWh of energy per year.

• Nuclear would provide 85 percent of current energy consumption—all carbon-free—for less than half of the CARES Act stimulus.

And the cost of nuclear per MWh would drop by about 60 percent, which would have been great for the clean energy and net zero transition.

Studies have found that there is nothing inherently expensive about nuclear.

And as the learning curve comes alive again, nuclear is set to get much, much cheaper.

Go to next chapter >