The State of the U.S. Nuclear Industry

Nuclear power in the U.S. has stagnated along with overall energy demand. Prospects for growth are instead in exports of new small modular reactors.

Powered up reactor core of the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory in 2009. Photo by Argonne National Laboratory. Source.

Nuclear power provides millions of times more energy per unit of mass than any other viable energy source. Only fusion power, which currently remains speculative, can produce more energy than nuclear fission. The promise of any kind of major technological revolution or material economic growth in the medium term future ultimately requires concomitant industrial growth, which itself ultimately requires cheap and abundant energy. Nuclear power is by far the best way to achieve abundant energy in practice, so the growth or stagnation of nuclear industries almost necessarily bounds reasonable expectations about technological change and economic growth in the future.