nuclear-news

World Nuclear Industry Status Report  Energy overview- a nuclear dead end?

a possible driver for more high cost nuclear is that it can support the production of nuclear weapons……… evidently ‘military considerations can override economic ones’,

October 04, 2025, https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2025/10/wnisr-energy-overview-nuclear-dead-end.html

The annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report as usual looks in great detail at the state of play for nuclear, mostly still not doing too well, compared with renewables, mostly doing better, with the report looking extensively at that as well as the ups and downs of nuclear. The renewable challenge is after all very striking: for example, global solar electricity generation has increased by about 28%, with costs continuing to fall. And crucially, in April 2025, renewables exceeded nuclear power generation globally for the first time. 

However, although construction costs and delays remain a big problem, the nuclear story is not entirely negative. Given reactor start-ups and closures in 2024, nuclear added 5.3 GW net, while operating capacity increased by 2% and electricity output by 2.9%. But given the overall growth of electricity use, the nuclear share of global power has fallen to 9%. Whereas renewables are expanding overall. And that is despite some recent financial problems.  For example, in 2024 wind energy deployment was hindered by the general economic & political environment. But even so wind electricity TWh generation still increased by close to 8%. 

Nevertheless, despite renewable growth, WNISR concludes that, while ‘including hydro, gross electricity generation of all renewables grew by 862 TWh or 9.6 % in 2024’ that was ‘not enough to keep pace with the rising global electricity demand (up by 1,293 TWh), driven by higher temperatures, industrial expansion, electrification, and unambitious demand-side management & efficiency policies’. Although it says that renewables could in theory catch up with overall demand, that would require some major changes. The whole basis of the system logic must it says undergo a deep transformation, with a new framework for energy policy. Just comparing nuclear and renewables as if they were simply substitutable supply alternatives will not suffice: they are fundamentally different. 

WNISR says ‘The underlying physics of the two technologies shows that significant disparities between them render nuclear inherently more costly, both in its present state and in the future’. For example, it says that ‘atomic energy is the only technology exploiting nuclear forces. It therefore has safety & security problems, as well as long-term liabilities, that competing technologies do not have. Technologies that exploit nano-level mechanisms in the electron shell of atoms, aided by quantum-mechanical insights, exhibit the most rapid innovation & cost decline’. And it concludes ‘an analysis of the system characteristics of the emerging overall energy system indicates that photovoltaics, batteries, and power electronics are already modifying the logic of the overall system in a manner that renders it increasingly challenging for nuclear power to be integrated into’. 

That sounds quite optimistic for renewables if it is taken on board fully, but grim for nuclear, which it says ‘has essentially gotten stuck with the concepts of 75 years ago. While the quantum physics revolution has allowed progress in other fields, such as innovative materials, semiconductors, information technology, or artificial intelligence, it has only been marginally useful in advancing nuclear technologies.’

However, the new green techs have their own problems- notably the variability of some sources. WNISR says there are ‘widespread expectations that the expansion of renewables & especially solar will slow down,’ due to the need ‘to provide sufficient flexibility for high shares of renewables’. But solving this problem means that the whole system has to change, with flexible supply and demand and short and long term storage becoming very important, if we are get to net zero. Fortunately, WNISR says, ‘there is a wide array of opportunities for flexibility in the electricity system’ ranging from ‘reserve generation capacity provided by gas peaker plants to excess solar generation capacities curtailed during maximum sunshine, from batteries in homes to intermediate heat storage in industrial plants, and from changes in consumer habits or cost-neutral power use patterns to changes in industrial production rhythm enabled by additional intermediate product storage’. 

Though it says that ‘those reluctant to embrace change call for a slowdown in the growth of renewables & are slow to pave the way for additional flexibility’, and also, ‘with some success, advocates of nuclear energy have spread the impression that decarbonization is expensive anyway and that alternatives to nuclear are no better.’ However, WNISR say that is wrong: ‘A series of simulations has consistently shown that 100-percent renewable energy systems are not more expensive than the conventional fossil- fuel-based approach. More importantly, 100-percent renewables-based systems are less costly than those that include nuclear power’. 

Moreover, it claims that ‘nuclear plants do not provide the type of flexible, dispatchable power that can fill the gaps between solar power peaks. They need flexibility from other sources for bridging considerable planned and unplanned outages and for buffering between changing demand and their inflexible full-load operation. The cost of their baseload electricity is more expensive than the ultra-flexible combination of renewables-plus-storage-plus-flexible demand’.  About all that WNISR seem able to offer as a possible driver for more high cost nuclear is that it can support the production of nuclear weapons. It quotes French President Macon’s claim that ‘without civil nuclear, no military nuclear; without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ That’s a pretty grim statement, and I will be exploring some of the implications for renewables of that sort of view in my next post.

In terms of the drive to nuclear, while WNISR notes that evidently ‘military considerations can override economic ones’, so can other factors and commitments. It says that there are ‘those who are still attached to the old (energy) paradigm, whether due to vested interests, ideological reasons, or deep identification with past activities and declining structures’. The dead hand of the past stop progress and the acceptance of new green energy paradigms. The report rounds off by saying that ‘changing paradigms is a tedious and slow process’ and notes that Max Planck, who was at the centre of a key paradigm shift in physics a century ago, said a bit bleakly ‘Science advances one funeral at a time.’ Let’s hope that’s not the only way it can happen. As WNISR warns ‘the time left for complete decarbonization of the energy system is short – not even a generation.’ Quite so.  With a key attraction of renewables being that they are cheaper and faster to deploy than nuclear, with it being unclear if SMRs will offer any improvement, certainly not soon. 

October 7, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Data Centers PILLAGE ELECTRICITY For AI Video Slop

October 7, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Equinix enters into multiple advanced nuclear deals to power data centers

By Laila Kearney, August 14, 2025

 Major data center developer and operator Equinix (EQIX.O), opens new tab
has entered into several advanced nuclear electricity deals, including
power purchase agreements for fission energy and pre-ordering microreactors
for its operations, the company said on Thursday.

 Big Tech’s race to expand technologies like generative artificial
intelligence, which requires warehouse-like data centers that can require
city-sized amounts of electricity at a single site, is driving up global
energy consumption and raising fears about depleted power supplies.

 Reuters 14th Aug 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinix-enters-into-multiple-advanced-nuclear-deals-power-data-centers-2025-08-14/

August 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is a parasite on AI’s credibility

The IEA expects renewables to add 10–20-fold more electricity supply than data centers raise demand. Renewables and storage are already 93% of US and 95% of world electric capacity expected to be added this year. These cheapest and fastest options can come online sooner than a data center, and they already reliably power critical loads like data centers.

Global nuclear power in a good year adds only as much net capacity as renewables add every two days

 July 20, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/07/20/nuclear-power-is-a-parasite-on-ais-credibility/

The following is the press release announcing a new essay by Stanford University’s Amory Lovins, Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity: Managing the Risks.

Claims of soaring electricity needs to power ravenous new AI data centers underpin the energy emergency declared for national security. Yet new research synthesized by a prominent energy expert, Amory Lovins, explains how hidden order-of-magnitude uncertainties in AI’s energy needs are risking major speculative losses and energy-market distortions—and he highlights timely remedies.

In fact, US electricity use fell in 2023, and in 2024, it rose only 2%—less than in three other years of the past ten. Forecasts of future electricity use have lately risen, especially in a few hotspots that promote and subsidize new data centers.

Yet that’s far from a broad trend, and most of the forecast growth is for other or reshored industries, electric vehicles, and electrifying buildings and factories. Data centers used only about 4.5% of US electricity in 2024. Of global electricity growth, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says only 5% in 2024 was for new data centers, rising to 5–10% of growth in 2025–30. Both nationally and globally, most data centers aren’t even made or run for AI; they’re for traditional functions like search engines, e-mail, and e-commerce.

Big Tech firms are indeed investing at least a trillion dollars in new AI data centers. Hundreds are planned, some as power-hungry as a small city. However, only a small fraction of those proposed are likely to be built, and not all those built are certain to thrive. Overforecasting seems endemic, severe, and underrecognized. It’s caused by peculiarities of the current data-center marketplace. But underlying those are many fundamental unknowables—even about the dominant model’s basic validity.

These make future demand for AI services extremely uncertain. Industry leaders and analysts warn of a potential financial bubble. Moreover, the electricity needed to produce a given amount of AI service is durably falling by about fourfold every year. That’s faster than purchases of AI services (costly to produce, but now often given free as bait) seem set to keep growing, yielding the revenue to buy the electricity. 

Assuming explosive growth in power for AI thus looks like a double bubble that can cause toil and trouble for utility investors and for other electricity customers, as Utility Dive reported yesterday. Two precedents counsel caution: widely believed 1999 coal-industry claims that information technology would use half of US electricity by 2020 proved about 2400% too high, and in 2010–18, the world’s data centers did 550% more computing with 6% more electricity. Lovins offers important new precautions and solutions. 

Even ambitious forecasts of AI’s electricity needs could be met by any of three proven methods: running data centers more flexibly on rare occasions without materially compromising service; freeing up supplies that are now largely wasted by other customers; and siting new data centers and clean energy (solar, wind, storage) together near little-used existing gas plants. 

“Both time- and location-based adaptability offer promising pathways to transform data centers from electricity liabilities into grid and regional assets,” according to Stanford’s Amory Lovins. “By aligning compute demand with cleaner energy availability—whether by time-shifting workloads or siting them in regions with surplus renewables—data centers can support grid resilience, reduce carbon intensity and other impacts, save infrastructure, and cut cost, if not distorted by short-term economic incentives such as local tax breaks.

The IEA expects renewables to add 10–20-fold more electricity supply than data centers raise demand. Renewables and storage are already 93% of US and 95% of world electric capacity expected to be added this year. These cheapest and fastest options can come online sooner than a data center, and they already reliably power critical loads like data centers.

Fossil and nuclear plants, both favored by federal policy, would be far slower and costlier: turbines for new gas plants are sold out to at least 2031, and global nuclear power in a good year adds only as much net capacity as renewables add every two days.

“Renewables’ high speed and low cost have run off with the world power market. For anyone who reads the data and respects the market, it’s game over. Nuclear energy is a parasite on AI’s credibility. Pairing them makes them both less investable,” added Lovins. 

Buying slower, costlier power by misunderstanding AI and grids risks higher retail rates and painful investor losses—as occurred when hundreds of unneeded power plants were built in a similar panic a quarter-century ago (part of the dot-com bubble’s $5-trillion losses).

Utility regulators should protect the public from these speculative risks by requiring data-center developers to post a bond or insurance policy guaranteeing full payment for their future power needs. Then the parties seeking profits will bear the independently priced risks that their projects create. Responsible AI use may also reduce the risk that AI-enabling more and cheaper oil and gas production may emit more carbon than AI saves.

Physicist Amory Lovins is a globally recognized expert on energy productivity, renewable energy, and sustainable design based at Stanford University. The full article is available for download.

July 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY | Leave a comment