It’s early in 2025 and the nuclear industry stands poised for great things. Public acceptance levels for nuclear energy are the highest they have been in decades – if not ever. Global climate and energy security drivers are pushing governments strongly in the direction of starting or expanding nuclear energy programmes. Adding further momentum, leading financial institutions and other major industrial sectors such as Big Tech have finally received the message and made their support for nuclear energy public.
In the media we see announcement after announcement from advanced nuclear technology companies raving about their progress. Even where new technology isn’t necessarily making the nuclear sector better, it is leading to massive new demand for reliable electricity and supporting the business case for new nuclear plants.
Things generally seem rosy in the nuclear industry at the moment, but if you put your reading glasses on and take a closer look you will discover an industry beset by problems.
In too many places nuclear projects are costing enormously more than estimated and taking far too long to complete. Even while nominally supportive of nuclear energy, key financial organisations are still not backing projects in a way that exposes themselves to any genuine risk. Nuclear phase outs are still on the cards in several countries, and even though substantially weakened, anti-nuclearism is still influential in certain key fora.
The number of companies ready to supply and construct nuclear developments internationally is painfully low and the pool of properly trained human resources available to do key jobs is shallow. This goes triple for newcomer countries. Despite the hype, many nuclear innovators are stuck and struggling to get pilot projects underway. Some are facing financial headwinds and even bankruptcy.
The market for uranium and front-end fuel services remains in a state of upheaval as a result of a lack of investment, exacerbated by recent political interventions. Many fuel analysts are now wary of future potential shortfalls. On the back end of the fuel cycle things remain as constipated as ever, with only a handful of countries making meaningful progress towards final disposal. Even constructing new interim storage sites seems too hard for many. This sorry list goes on and on.
The nuclear industry finds itself to be the hero of the hour but is apparently completely unfit for the task at hand. No one in the nuclear industry can seriously expect it to grow to provide three times more electricity globally by 2050 without profound changes taking place. At the moment, then, the industry and its supporting bodies are woefully out of shape.
If this were a movie then about now you might hope for some kind of training montage to play out set to rousing music. The industry needs a sector-wide transformational plan to introduce new good habits and get rid of bad ones.
As anyone that has ever attempted a personal transition from couch potato to athlete knows, half measures are simply not going to cut it. You cannot make minor alterations to existing frameworks and orthodoxies and expect to see Olympic results. Progress takes constant effort and a re-evaluation of previous choices. Equally though, one cannot expect to go from ‘zero to hero’ overnight. That way lies failure – try cutting all carbohydrates from your diet instantly and see how long you last! There must be a realistic pathway. Goals and milestones have to be specific and achievable.
So what does this full-body-transformation plan for the nuclear industry actually look like, and what are the sacred cows which must now be slaughtered? Unfortunately, the ability to identify the issues grants no immediate wisdom as to the root causes and even less towards the necessary solutions.
These answers should really come from a taskforce of dedicated experts who feel no strong attachment towards the way things are done today. Ideally these experts would assemble in a neutral global body which effectively becomes the industry’s personal trainer. Their overriding objective would be to get the global nuclear industry fit for a 3X future.
But what is the point of an opinion column if not to share opinions? So here are a few ideas.
3X industry goal number one:
Establish at least two new national nuclear reactor export champions before the end of the decade.
The nuclear industry would benefit greatly from the emergence of more reactor vendors to actively compete in the global export market. These should be national champions from countries other than the USA, France, China, South Korea and Russia. This increased diversity and depth should help more newcomer countries get programmes underway sooner. It may seem counter intuitive to competitors that more vendors are needed, but the overall market will be healthier.
Canada, Japan, India and the UK are all on this watchlist due to their existing capabilities. Which governments however are willing to take their national industries to the next level? What can the global industry do to support?
3X industry goal number two:
Each established major light water and pressurised heavy water reactor designer to develop a ‘simple-proven’ reactor design that is optimised for cost-first and suitable for newcomer countries
Sticking with large reactor and nuclear plant design, radical changes are clearly needed. The design priority simply must shift from enhancing safety to enhancing constructability if we want to see more plants built quickly around the world.
Reports have highlighted complexity as being a particularly challenging factor for nuclear project management. There can be many contributors to project complexity of course, but a major one is surely design complexity such as additional and interconnected safety systems and heightened safety requirements.
Gen III reactor designs are clearly safer-by-design than Gen II, but they are also more complex and as it turns out more costly to construct. Gen IV is expected to be safer again, but in many cases designs may also be more complex. While many advanced reactor designers claim increased simplicity, we only have the paper versions for now. We can only wait to see how demonstrations turn out.
There is some precedent for design simplification, with the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor emphasising this and the EPR-2 apparently heading in this direction. The question is whether vendors dare go further still down the simplification path?
The ‘sacred cow’ on the chopping block here is that Western reactor vendors meeting elite Western regulatory requirements effectively get to set the global safety baseline. Newcomer countries deserve the right to improve safety over time, just as established nuclear counties had to. Put another way, if a design is at least as safe as Three Mile Island unit 2 turned out to be in 1978 – with a deathless nuclear accident and short-term evacuation – is that not a safe enough design for a country to at least start their nuclear energy programme?
3X industry goal number three:
As many as possible radical new nuclear project construction and delivery models to be implemented before the end of the decade
The evidence tells us that the components of a nuclear plant typically aren’t too expensive, but assembly and verification is a different story. There are many excellent initiatives that offer solutions that could radically improve nuclear plant manufacture and construction – for example shipyard construction of nuclear plants, and the technologies being pursued as part of the US Nuclear Reactor Innovation Centre’s Advanced Construction Technology Initiative.
Indeed, there seems to be no shortage of ideas, but they need to be trialled with knowledge shared globally ASAP.
This piece has focused heavily on nuclear plant vendors and construction as the weak areas holding the nuclear sector back. The rest of the industry seems to be genuinely doing better, but is certainly not off the hook for improvement. Stand by for part 2.
