Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, circa 2024. Decades after its accident, Three Mile Island is now playing a significant role in America’s nuclear energy revolution. (Shutterstock/Erik Bergin)

America’s Nuclear Revolution Is Here—And It Won’t Look Like the Last One

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The 2000s nuclear renaissance didn’t fail—it laid the groundwork. Now decentralized reactors, private capital, and regulatory reform are poised to power data centers, mines, and military bases nationwide.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Consider the nuclear renaissance.

From around 2001 to 2010, the world rediscovered commercial nuclear energy. For the first time in a long time, demand for electricity was on the rise, and people wanted something clean, domestic, and affordable. By then, the cultural impact of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had largely faded, the anti-nuclear movement had lost much of its momentum, and conventional energy prices were on the rise. This convergence of factors made nuclear energy cool again, and a new generation of scientists, engineers, and investors emerged to make a revived run at commercial nuclear energy.

But then the 2011 accident at Fukushima raised concerns about safety, the advent of hydraulic fracturing reduced energy prices, and costs for new nuclear skyrocketed. And just like that, the nuclear renaissance fizzled and was deemed a failure.

The world is standing at the threshold of a commercial nuclear revolution, one that would have been impossible without the renaissance that came before it. The renaissance reintroduced the public to nuclear energy and gave them time to become comfortable with it. The failures helped to weed out the weakest companies and reveal industrial inefficiencies. The experience helped policymakers understand that the regulatory structures they created had become obsolete and required reform.

All of this enabled the US public, government, and industry to be better prepared for the next time nuclear energy had an opportunity. With growing demand for power in the United States, a greater appreciation for the value of secure energy, and the negative impact of failed green policies such as higher prices and reduced reliability, could that time be now?

Why Wall Street Is Betting Big on Nuclear Energy

Wall Street certainly thinks so.

Uranium-related investments returned roughly 32 percent annually over the past three years, advanced-reactor startups are raising billions of dollars in private money, and Morgan Stanley now expects $2.2 trillion to flow into the global nuclear industry by 2050.

This influx of private investment differs from the nuclear renaissance period, when most spending centered on utilities and traditional power producers. This is where the renaissance begins evolving into a revolution.

Certainly, the large, centralized, heavily regulated utilities will play a role in the next era of nuclear energy, but they likely won’t drive it as they did during the initial rise of American nuclear energy in the 1960s and 1970s. That leadership will come from a new generation of power users that are underserved by the current system.

Some are obvious. The tech world needs power for data centers, for example, and the modern grid is incapable of providing it in many cases. But others aren’t so obvious. What about remote villages and towns? Islands? Or entire nations or regions that lack access to modern power infrastructure?

The fact is that new nuclear energy makes sense for all these applications for the exact same reasons. Whether because of geography, policy, or economics, these underserved users find themselves in electricity deserts where conventional energy is difficult to deliver. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, can be delivered anywhere. It doesn’t need a grid to connect to, doesn’t require complex fuel-delivery infrastructure, can be scaled up or down depending on application, and can produce power for an almost limitless spectrum of........

© The National Interest