Nuclear energy: A global industrial and energy trend gaining momentum

In 2025, the global nuclear energy industry experienced one of its weakest years on record: only two reactors came online, seven were permanently shut down, and nuclear capacity decreased by approximately 1.1 gigawatts. The current rebound is sharp. Around 15 reactors are expected to come online in 2026, adding close to 12 gigawatts of new capacity — a significant turnaround following a year of contraction¹.  The temptation is to view this as a cyclical correction. However, it is not. The forces driving nuclear power’s resurgence are compounding simultaneously: surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, energy security imperatives, net-zero commitments, and the structural limitations of weather-dependent generation. The nuclear energy industry is entering a new structural phase, and the strategic implications for energy-intensive industries and grid operators alike are immediate.

Nuclear is entering a new growth cycle after decades of stagnation

Nuclear power currently produces just under 10% of global electricity supply, making it the world’s second-largest source of low-emissions electricity after hydropower². For two decades, that share barely moved. Now it is rising. Nuclear generation set a new record in 2025 and is forecast to grow at an average rate of 2.8% annually through 2030, more than double the 1.3% growth rate of the preceding five-year period³.

The construction pipeline reflects this renewed momentum. More than 70 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity are currently under construction globally, one of the highest levels in 30 years (International Energy Agency, 2025). This is a structural shift, not a short-term spike. The drivers behind it are multi-decade in nature: climate policy, industrial electrification, and the rise of AI-driven electricity demand. Governments and corporations that previously treated nuclear reactor investment as a legacy commitment are now treating it as a strategic necessity. The nuclear energy transition from stagnation to expansion is not a policy aspiration; it is already visible in construction starts, reactor restarts, and long-term power purchase agreements being signed across multiple continents.

What distinguishes this growth cycle from previous waves of nuclear enthusiasm is the simultaneous alignment of demand pull and policy push. Energy security concerns, decarbonization targets, and surging baseload electricity requirements are converging, creating conditions in which advanced nuclear technology is the only credible answer that governments and industries have found to all three pressures at once.

AI and data centers are creating an electricity demand that only baseload power can meet

The increasing use of electricity to power data centers and AI is accelerating demand growth at a pace that is reshaping energy planning timelines across the developed world. Goldman Sachs estimates that data center electricity demand could rise by 160% by 2030 (Carbon Credits, 2025). The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that electricity demand growth over the next five years will be 50% higher on average than the previous decade (International Energy Agency, 2025). Nuclear is increasingly seen as a critical part of a secure, affordable, and diverse electricity mix capable of meeting this demand without adding carbon emissions or grid instability.

Technology companies have already reached this conclusion. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are signing long-term nuclear power agreements (Carbon Credits, 2025). Microsoft’s agreement to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 is the clearest signal: Big Tech is treating nuclear power generation as infrastructure, not aspiration. The load profile of an AI data center is continuous, predictable, and intolerant of outages. It requires generation that can provide firm, dispatchable power around the clock. A clean-energy baseload from nuclear power meets this requirement in a way that solar, wind, or battery storage at current scales cannot. For industrial operators and energy-intensive manufacturers, the same logic applies beyond the technology sector. As more industries electrify their processes, the reliability and long-run price stability of the underlying power supply become direct inputs to competitiveness. Low-carbon energy from nuclear, once viewed as a cost premium in liberalized markets, is being reframed as a hedge against the price volatility and supply uncertainty that a grid dominated by intermittent generation will eventually produce.

Small modular reactors are redefining how nuclear gets built

The traditional barrier to new nuclear investment has not been public opposition or regulatory approval, though both remain relevant. It has been a capital-intensive structure: the requirement to commit tens of billions of dollars to a decade-long construction program before a single megawatt-hour reaches the grid. Small modular reactors (SMR) disrupt this model. Faster to build, more flexible to deploy, and with greater potential for cost reduction at scale as manufacturing volumes grow, SMRs represent a fundamentally different industrial pathway for nuclear power generation. The SMR market is gaining traction with large investments from tech giants, and the US has signed an executive order targeting a quadrupling of nuclear capacity by 2050⁴. The IEA identifies plans for up to 25 gigawatts of SMR capacity globally, driven largely by data centers seeking nuclear reactor capacity⁵. In a scenario with tailored policy support and streamlined regulation, SMR capacity could reach 120 gigawatts by 2050, with investment rising from less than $5 billion today to $25 billion by 2030⁶. China’s Linglong One, the world’s first commercial onshore SMR, is scheduled to begin operations in the first half of 2026, providing the technology’s first commercial proof point and accelerating procurement decisions elsewhere (Carbon Credits, 2025).

Advanced nuclear technology in the SMR format also offers something that large reactors structurally cannot: deployment proximity. SMRs can be co-located with industrial loads, positioned on data center campuses, or placed at retiring coal plant sites that already have grid interconnection and community acceptance. For manufacturers and industrial operators trying to decarbonize hard-to-abate processes, this siting flexibility changes what a credible low-carbon energy transition looks like at the facility level.

More than 40 countries are expanding nuclear as part of their energy strategy

The geographic breadth of nuclear commitment is as significant as the scale of investment. More than 40 countries have active plans to expand nuclear’s role in their energy systems (International Energy Agency, 2025), and nuclear is being framed by governments simultaneously as both a climate tool and an energy security instrument. China has joined the global pledge to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050⁷, reinforcing a commitment that now spans emerging and advanced economies alike. These dual framings reinforce each other: the same reactor that reduces carbon emissions also reduces dependence on imported gas and diversifies the generation mix against weather-related supply variability.

Global nuclear investment currently stands at around $65 billion per year. If all announced pledges are met, that figure rises to $120 billion by 2030 (BNP Paribas Global Markets, 2026). China is leading this expansion by a considerable margin. Nearly half of all reactors currently under construction are located there (Carbon Credits, 2025), China is on course to overtake both the United States and Europe in installed nuclear capacity before the end of this decade (International Energy Agency, 2025). In Europe, policy-driven lifetime extensions and new-build commitments are expanding the nuclear energy industry across multiple markets, with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia among those advancing reactor contracts. The United States, while lagging in construction starts, has committed significant federal financing to reactor restarts and life extensions alongside the SMR executive order. Japan is incorporating nuclear explicitly into its long-term energy strategy following years of post-Fukushima inertia. For multinational industrial organizations, this policy convergence has direct relevance: energy procurement strategies and facility investment decisions in every major region now need to account for a nuclear energy industry that is structurally expanding.

Supply chain concentration and delivery risk remain the industry’s biggest challenges

The case for nuclear power’s structural comeback is compelling. The constraints on how fast that comeback can materialize are equally real. Uranium production is highly concentrated in four countries, with Kazakhstan accounting for 43% of global mine output (BNP Paribas Global Markets, 2026). Enrichment capacity is similarly concentrated, with a small number of supplier nations controlling the vast majority of global processing capacity (International Energy Agency, 2025). Delivery timelines and construction costs remain major barriers to scaling quickly, and these supply chain vulnerabilities represent a structural risk factor that no amount of policy ambition alone can resolve.

Construction delivery risk compounds the supply chain problem. Western nuclear projects have a consistent history of cost overruns and schedule extensions, with gigawatt-scale nuclear reactors in Europe and North America routinely exceeding both budget and timeline by wide margins. The IEA identifies on-time, on-budget delivery as the operational challenge the industry must overcome to realize its potential (ibid.). Countries and utilities that cannot solve the execution problem will find that their nuclear ambitions remain targets in policy documents rather than capacity on the grid.

This is precisely where operational discipline becomes the differentiating variable in nuclear’s next chapter. The supply chains, workforce pipelines, and construction sequencing protocols that determine whether a nuclear reactor project stays on schedule are built through the same mechanisms that govern performance in any complex manufacturing environment: standardized work, systematic root-cause problem-solving, and the continuous improvement culture that prevents small deviations from compounding into structural delays. Value Stream Mapping across nuclear construction programs reveals precisely where delays originate and where early standardization investments deliver the greatest execution advantage. The nuclear energy industry has the capital and the policy support it needs. The capability it must now build is the operational foundation to convert that support into megawatts. The nuclear energy transition now underway is structural, not cyclical. The convergence of AI-driven electricity demand, energy security priorities, and low-carbon energy commitments has created conditions that no previous wave of nuclear enthusiasm could claim to have. For energy-intensive industries, grid operators, and any organization whose competitive position depends on reliable, affordable, zero-emission power, the question is no longer whether nuclear is returning; it is whether the organizations that need it are building the relationships, supply chains, and operational capability to act when the capacity becomes available.

References

1. Carbon Credits. (2025). 2026: The year nuclear power reclaims relevance with 15 reactors, AI demand, and China’s expansion. ↩︎
2. International Energy Agency. (2025). A new era for nuclear energy beckons as projects, policies and investments increase. ↩︎
3. IEA. (2026).Electricity 2026: Supply. ↩︎
4. BNP Paribas Global Markets. (2026). Nuclear energy fund opportunities 2026. ↩︎
5. International Energy Agency. (2025). The path to a new era for nuclear energy: Executive summary. ↩︎
6. International Energy Agency. (2025). The path to a new era for nuclear energy: Outlook for nuclear investment. ↩︎
7. Climate Change News. (2026, March 13). China joins pledge to triple global nuclear energy capacity. ↩︎