ON THE NUCLEAR TRAIL

The dawn of a global renaissance in nuke energy

- Shabana Begum

While concerns of energy security, climate change and affordability are universal, each country's decision on including nuclear power in its energy mix will depend on other factors.

Nuclear power is greatly feared by many. Memories of horrific incidents involving nuclear power plants come to mind the Three Mile Island accident in the US in the 1970s, the horrific Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, and the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.

But public opinion may be shifting. More countries are interested in expanding their nuclear reactor fleets. Even Singapore has said nuclear energy is not off the table.

What's driving this global nuclear renaissance? There are a number of factors.

Among them are energy security and prices - Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused prices of natural gas to spike, and pushed countries to prioritise domestic energy generation, such as by using nuclear power.

Pressure is also mounting on countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, as extreme weather events due to climate change are wreaking increasing havoc across the world.

To date, 25 countries - including France, Japan and the United States have pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a movement that kicked off at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Plans are afoot to restart Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear station the site of America's worst nuclear accident in 1979 - to power Microsoft's data centres for artificial intelligence.

Nuclear energy now makes up about 10 per cent of electricity production globally, according to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This proportion is set to grow.

Every year since 2021, IAEA has been revising upwards its projections for global nuclear capacity.