Top Nuclear News of 2024

Is this the year nuclear finally became cool?

For a good part of 2024 you couldn’t go two weeks without getting a major announcement that would have had us falling out of our chairs any other year. It’s been hard to put this list together because there’s simply been too much, and I’m sure I left a lot of stuff out.

The big mega-trend driving a number of this year’s top developments is the rapid emergence of AI as a massive source of power demand. But elsewhere, the momentum built from previous years kept rolling. Of course, nuclear energy was always cool to us. But this is the year I noticed a lot of enthusiasm from people who aren’t paying that much attention to energy.

Let’s take a look back at the top nuclear news of 2024:

1: Three Mile Island Restart

America’s most notorious nuclear power plant had its last unit shuttered in 2019, killed by cheap shale gas. However, it must not have been completely decommissioned because Amazon paid its owners to get it started up again in a blockbuster $1.6 billion deal to provide power to its data centers.

There’s been a number of other deals from tech companies to buy power from existing nuclear plants, ensuring their future financial stability. But there are only so many existing plants and hardly any more candidates for restart.

Read more about it on Elemental

2: America goes Big on nuclear

As Vogtle 3&4 crosses the finish line at last, the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm called for “hundreds” of new large reactors to be built in the US. “We need two hundred of these by 2050. Two down, one hundred and ninety-eight to go,” she said. The turnaround in official attitudes from as recently as 2022 of “SMR and advanced only” is remarkable.

In November the Biden administration put out a roadmap that will see nuclear capacity in the US triple by 2050 featuring large gigawatt-scale reactors alongside SMRs. That administration is on its way out. Time will tell whether the incoming Trump administration (which is also pro-nuclear) will pick up what they put down.

Read more about it on Elemental

3: Congress passes the ADVANCE Act

The ADVANCE act, which passed overwhelmingly in congress with bipartisan support, redirects the NRC’s mission to support the development of nuclear. Fees are cut, processes are streamlined and the agency is explicitly told it should not “unnecessarily limit” the development of civilian nuclear.

Anecdotal reports from the industry show that it’s having a vitalizing impact in their interactions with the agency already.

4: Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 reactor licensed for construction

This is the first electricity-producing Gen IV reactor to be approved by the US NRC. Two Hermes 2 units with a combined output of 20MWe are slated to begin operation in December 2027 at Oak Ridge. For all the talk we’ve been having about Gen IV SMRs, this is actually the first to be licensed in the US, the first being only a year ago.

5: First World Nuclear Summit

World leaders gathered at Brussels for the first World Nuclear Summit in Brussels this April. “Never before has it been so obvious that the energy transition cannot happen on solar and wind alone,” said Mark Rutte, then Prime Minister of the Netherlands. The gathering had a European flavor but world leaders and their representatives from every continent except for Australia were in attendance.

Nuclear Energy Summit opening in Brussels, Belgium

Read more about it on Elemental

6: Big Banks back nuclear at New York Climate Week

14 major banks and financial institutions came out in support of nuclear power at New York Climate Week. To be clear, no funds were pledged. This is just them saying they’re up for investing in nuclear if the right opportunities come along. It says something about the previous untouchability of nuclear projects that such an announcement is significant.

7: Google and Meta seek new nuclear

It’s one thing for tech to seek deals with existing nuclear plants, quite another to see if they actually have the patience and ambition to drive the creation of new capacities. Google announced a deal with Kairos Power to buy power. Meta launched a request for proposals for 1.4GW of nuclear power. Switch signed a whopping 12GW agreement with Oklo.

It’s good to remember that these deals are preliminary and an agreement to buy power is not the same as an actual investment.

9: Flamanville 3 connected to grid

It’s been an epic and expensive 17-year journey but France’s Flamanville 3 is finally connected to the grid. The pain and uncertainty is at an end, and if Vogtle 3&4’s experience is anything to go by this will allow the French industry to shift the narrative with its hard-won success.

10: Molten salt reactor approved at Abilene Christian University

The tantalizing technology of Molten Salt Reactors was last tested in the United States in the 1960s at Oak Ridge. Since then, dozens of reactor startups have been based on the concept but none has been able to split an atom. All that is set to change with the approval of the Molten Salt Research Reactor at Abilene Christian University in Texas.

(The Chinese have built another molten salt reactor that is reportedly already in operation in the Gobi desert. But details are scant.)

Read more about it on Elemental