Five Reasons Why The US Won’t Quadruple Its Nuclear Capacity By 2050 (With Six Charts)

I’m adamantly pro-nuclear. But Trump’s pending executive order aiming for a 4X expansion of the domestic fleet isn't realistic.

Cherenkov radiation emitted from the core of the Advanced Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory in 2009.

Next week, the White House is expected to release several executive orders calling for a massive expansion of nuclear energy. The orders will reportedly set a goal of quadrupling the US nuclear fleet from today’s 100 gigawatts (GW) to 400 GW by 2050.

One of the orders states, “swift and decisive action is required to jump-start America’s nuclear renaissance.” Another calls for reorganizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and another aims to have the Defense Department finance and host new reactors on military bases.

I’m adamantly pro-nuclear. I’ve been saying the same thing for more than 15 years: If we are serious about decarbonization, we should be pursuing N2N, natural gas to nuclear. In my 2008 book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” I wrote that nuclear is the only source that can “make a significant dent in the overall use of fossil fuels.” I explained that Toshiba, General Electric, and Westinghouse were all working on new reactor designs and that “some of the world’s leading environmentalists have decided that nuclear power is the best option for the future.” I pointed out that Patrick Moore, Stewart Brand, and James Lovelock had become outspoken proponents of nuclear energy.

Again, I’m not changing my position on nuclear. Having ambitious goals can be good. But if the US wants to build hundreds of reactors over the next three decades, we have to be sober about the scale of the challenge. Further, we must look at the history of the global nuclear sector to better understand what may happen in the future.

Here are five reasons why we won’t see a quadrupling of the nuclear fleet over the next 25 years, along with six charts, and my (realistic) prediction about how much nuclear capacity the US should be able to build by 2050.