This article focuses on one particular failed nuclear power project in the U.S. but it checks in on the idea of a stalled “nuclear rennaissance” overall.

The South Carolina legislature conducted hearings about the project’s collapse. But it has fallen to the United States Attorney for South Carolina to outline internal decisions that led to project abandonment—via court filings, plea agreements, and indictments. These filings are proving to be the best documentation so far of criminal behavior related to projects that were part of a much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” that began in the early-2000s but has since petered out in the United States…

The fault for the shocking AP1000 misadventure falls squarely on the shoulders of Westinghouse and the involved utilities. They all fell victim to their own reactor-promotion propaganda but lacked the technical and management competence to pull off the projects as envisaged. With pursuit of large light-water reactors in the United States all but dead, the nuclear industry is now endlessly touting an array of “small modular reactors” and a dizzying menu of so-called “advanced reactors,” all of which exist only on paper. It’s unclear if there’s a path forward for this nuclear renaissance redux, and if there is, whether taxpayers will be put on the hook for financing some of it.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

I can imagine an alternate history without Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and where climate change was understood and taken seriously by the public and governments much earlier. Nuclear energy was embraced on a vast scale, homes, buildings, and transportation were mostly electrified, and the world economy grew for 50 years without the devastating carbon emissions that are now starting to wreck our planet’s ecology and threaten our food supply. No doubt, there are some accidents and waste storage/disposal problems in this world, but with an honest accounting of the cost of carbon pollution would this world be worse off? Maybe nuclear weapons proliferation would be worse in this world, but then again, maybe a world where civilian nuclear technology was more shared but controlled by international safeguards would feel less pressure for proliferation.

The other issue with nuclear power plants is they have incredibly high up front costs and are incredibly long-lived. As technology progresses, a nuclear power plant is going to be obsolete (i.e., not based on the latest technology) by the time you design it and get it in the ground, and then you are stuck operating it for the next 50 years. So you have to take a really long range view, governments have to shoulder a good portion of the risk, and you have to keep the R&D going in parallel even though you know it takes decades to pay off. All this is doable, it just takes leadership and discipline, which our species and civilization mostly lacks.