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A decade ago, it seemed as though the global nuclear industry was in an irreversible decline. Concerns over safety, cost, and what to do with radioactive waste had sapped enthusiasm for a technology once seen as a revolutionary source of abundant cheap energy.
Yet now there is widespread talk of a revival, fuelled by tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon all announcing investments in the sector, as well as the growing pressures on wealthy nations to curb their carbon emissions.
But how real is the comeback?
When commercial nuclear power was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s, governments were seduced by its seemingly unlimited potential. Nuclear reactors could harness and control the same awesome forces released by atomic bombs – to provide electricity for millions of homes.
But the technology also inspired public fear. And that fear seemed to be justified by the Chernobyl disaster, which spread radioactive contamination across Europe in early 1986.
In China, for example, there were 13 nuclear reactors in 2011. There are now 55, with another 23 under construction.
For Beijing, scrambling to meet rapidly growing electricity demand, nuclear had, and still has, a vital role to play.
Now interest in the sector seems to be growing elsewhere once again. This is partly because developed countries are hunting for ways to meet energy demand, while striving to meet emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.
South Korea, for example, recently scrapped plans to phase out its large fleet of nuclear power stations over the next four decades – and will build more instead.
And France has reversed plans to reduce its own reliance on nuclear energy, which provides 70% of its electricity. Instead, it wants to build up to eight new reactors.
In addition, last week the US government reaffirmed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Cop29, held in Azerbaijan, that it intends to triple nuclear energy production by 2050.
Other tech giants have taken a different approach. Google plans to buy energy produced from a handful of so-called Small Modular Reactors or SMRs – a nascent technology intended to make nuclear energy easier and cheaper to deploy. Amazon is also supporting SMR development and construction.
SMRs themselves are being promoted, in part, as a solution to one of the biggest drawbacks facing nuclear power today. In western nations, new power stations have to be built to exacting modern safety standards. This, combined with their sheer scale, makes them prohibitively expensive and complicated to build.
If current trends do herald a new nuclear age, one old problem remains. After 70 years of atomic power, there is still disagreement over what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste – some of which will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.
The answer being pursued by many governments is geological disposal – burying the waste in sealed tunnels deep underground. But only one country, Finland, has actually built such a facility, while environmentalists and anti-nuclear campaigners argue that dumping waste out of sight and out of mind is simply too risky.
Solving that conundrum may be a key factor in dictating whether there really will be a new age of nuclear power.
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