The Diablo Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, April 2005. As interest in new nuclear projects accelerates across the United States, separating meaningful commercialization milestones from industry hype has become increasingly important. (Flickr/emdot)

Red Herrings and Real Progress: Here’s How to Judge the Nuclear Revival

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Amid a flood of nuclear announcements, the projects making real progress are the ones advancing toward commercial deployment.

Seemingly every week, there are announcements from the nuclear energy sector about new partnerships, project developments, and industry “firsts.” At Third Way, after more than 15 years as a leading advocate for nuclear energy commercialization, we’re celebrating this monumental progress.

But these announcements and developments are not equally meaningful, sometimes obscuring the truly significant milestones of the leading US nuclear projects.

The field lacked a commercially focused analysis of active US nuclear projects as they currently stand. So, we decided to sort through the noise. While we can’t predict which technologies will eventually “win,” we can identify which projects—with specific sites and deployment opportunities for a particular nuclear technology—are leading the pack on the way to commercial deployment.

Our assessment, published in April this year, identified 22 active projects for new nuclear reactors, in addition to several restarts. Perhaps surprisingly, only five have distinguished themselves by moving through significant commercial........

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