Few energy sources have been debated, challenged and revived as often as nuclear power. What makes the current cycle different is that the evidence is showing up in policy, capital markets and corporate power deals.

Washington wants to quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050 and fast-track advanced reactor permits, with the aim of restoring the United States’ position as a global leader in nuclear energy. 1 Microsoft, Amazon and Google have all signed deals with advanced reactor and fusion developers, and Washington and Tokyo recently announced a USD 40 billion SMR programme for Tennessee and Alabama. Capital is moving back into a sector many had long written off.

Europe is moving too. In March 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Europe's retreat from nuclear power a “ strategic mistake ” and pledged €200 million for a new generation of small modular reactors.

Investments in nuclear have grown by more than 70% over the past five years, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects nuclear spending to top USD 100 billion annually under stated policies. More than 40 countries are now revising their nuclear strategies. 2

The question is no longer whether nuclear energy has a future. It is whether it can arrive in time.

Nuclear’s return to the political and industrial agenda is being driven less by sentiment than by a convergence of economic, technological and geopolitical pressures.

After two decades of flat consumption, electricity demand in advanced economies is rising sharply, driven by data centers, electrification and industrial reshoring. In the United States, projected data-center power demand alone is set to more than triple over the next decade, from 34.7 gigawatts in 2024 to 106 GW by 2035. 3 According to the IEA, global investment in data centers reached roughly USD 580 billion in 2025, more than was spent on global oil supply. 4 Grid operators across parts of the U.S. are already flagging capacity shortfalls as early as 2028, with pressures expected to intensify in 2029. 5

Another driver, particularly in Europe, is energy security. Recent shocks, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cut-off of Russian gas supplies into Europe to the conflict in the Middle East and the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have exposed two vulnerabilities at once.

The first is fuel-import dependence: Europe still imports more than half of its energy . The second is more structural: as demand surges, electricity systems increasingly require stable, dispatchable low-carbon power – power that is available on demand, locally controlled, and not weather-dependent. Nuclear, in principle, ticks all three boxes.

Progress, But Not Yet Scale

Innovation has also accelerated. Not through another generation of flagship gigawatt-scale reactors but through smaller, more standardized designs.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are designed to rethink how nuclear gets built. Instead of large, highly customized projects costing tens of billions of dollars and taking over a decade to construct, SMRs aim to use standardized, factory-built components that can be deployed faster and at lower cost. They are also designed to be inherently safer. Many advanced SMRs rely on passive safety systems that can place reactors in a safe state without external power or immediate human intervention. Some also require less frequent refueling, reducing fuel needs, waste and reliance on imported enriched uranium. 6 7

SMRs and next-generation reactor designs are attracting growing political and financial backing. The IEA expects more than 70 GW of new nuclear capacity to come online by the mid-2030s — one of the strongest pipelines in 30 years. 8 But this pipeline will not power data centers tomorrow, nor provide the near-term backup capacity that a resilient, renewable-driven grid still needs. As of today, NuScale Power holds the only SMR design certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 9 , while no SMR construction license has yet been granted in the EU.

Nuclear fusion is also following a similar pattern, though on a longer horizon. It is moving from the lab to industrial ambition - and nowhere more visibly than in the United States. Progress that once unfolded over decades is increasingly being measured in years.

Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spin-out, is targeting first plasma for its SPARC demonstration reactor in 2027, while already planning its first commercial plant in Virginia. Helion Energy in Washington State has gone further in commercialization efforts, signing the world's first fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft, breaking ground on a first commercial facility and becoming - through its Polaris prototype - the first private company to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion.

These are meaningful signals. Fusion is no longer only a scientific aspiration; it is increasingly becoming an industrial effort. Yet the gap between plasma milestones and reliable electricity on the grid remains substantial. While commercial fusion is increasingly credible, it remains a longer-term prospect rather than an answer to today’s capacity needs.

Timing is where the challenge becomes most visible. New nuclear commercial deployment remains largely a 2030s story, but the system needs power now.

Existing large reactors continue to struggle on cost and schedule. France's Flamanville-3 was completed roughly €10 billion over budget and 12 years behind schedule . On average, nuclear projects worldwide end up with construction cost overruns of about 100% and an additional USD 1.5 billion price tag.

Meeting ambitions to triple nuclear capacity by 2050 would also require a significant increase in investment - roughly USD 900 billion in additional spending, according to the IEA. Recent deal activity suggests investors are increasingly responding to that need. According to PitchBook, dispatchable energy sources, including nuclear and geothermal, have seen unusually strong deal value in recent quarters, with the period from Q1 2025 through Q1 2026 marking one of the strongest stretches on record outside the exceptional Commonwealth Fusion Systems funding round in 2021. Rising electricity demand, data-center growth, the need for dependable power, approaching commercialization, efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and exposure to their price volatility, as well as a more favorable U.S. policy environment, are all contributing to renewed investor interest. 10

But more funding does not automatically translate into faster deployment. Every dollar committed to nuclear also has to be weighed against technologies that are already commercially available and deployable at scale.

Nuclear also carries strategic considerations of its own. Russia still controls roughly half of global uranium-conversion capacity, and EU member states sourced about 15% of their natural uranium from Russia in 2024. Building alternative supply chains in the U.S. and Europe, through projects like the Burke Hollow uranium recovery site in South Texas, will take years. Recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have also highlighted another consideration: large nuclear facilities can become strategic vulnerabilities during periods of instability 11 , while distributed renewables are, by design, harder to disrupt at scale.

The Grid Needs More Than A Silver Bullet

None of this rules out an important role for nuclear in future energy systems. Reactors can provide continuous, high-capacity output for decades, independent of weather conditions. As electricity demand increasingly concentrates around AI infrastructure, data centers and industrial hubs, these characteristics become more valuable.

But the near-term challenge is different. Many of the technologies capable of responding to today’s demand growth are already commercially available. Wind, solar and grid-scale storage continue to scale rapidly while falling in cost. In the U.S., new nuclear is coming in at roughly USD 140–220 per megawatt-hour - around two to three times the cost of new solar or wind paired with battery storage, with the gap even wider for standalone utility-scale renewables. 12 That cost differential has generally widened over the past decade as renewable technologies have continued to decline in cost. In the United Kingdom, battery storage is already significantly cheaper and faster to deploy than new gas peakers for grid balancing. 13 Spain offers another signal: after years of large-scale investment in wind and solar, the country now has some of Europe’s lowest wholesale electricity prices, demonstrating how high renewable penetration can translate into lower power costs. 14

Other clean innovations, such as wave energy , are also moving closer to commercial viability and could help complement more variable sources with steadier output.

The most resilient energy systems will not rely on a single technology. They will combine scaled renewables, flexible grids, storage and, where it makes economic and strategic sense, nuclear power. The challenge is not choosing one technology over another but building systems capable of integrating a diverse portfolio effectively.

Nuclear's resurgence is not a return to the 1970s. It reflects a more pragmatic recognition: resilient, decarbonized power systems will need many sources of clean, dependable electricity, and ruling any of them out for political or ideological reasons carries costs.

But renewed relevance is not the same as readiness. The question is no longer whether nuclear technologies can progress. Across advanced fission and fusion, they already are. The harder question is whether they can scale, secure capital, navigate permitting and reach the grid fast enough to match demand.

That is why every new nuclear project will ultimately face the same test as every other technology: how fast can it deliver, at what cost, and at what risk?

Nuclear may become one of the defining energy stories of the coming decades and could help shape the energy mix of the 2030s. But the grid’s test is happening now, and for the time being the advantage is still likely to lie with technologies that are commercially mature, cost-competitive and deployable at scale.

1 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/deploying-advanced-nuclear-reactor-technologies-for-national-security/ ; https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ordering-the-reform-of-the-nuclear-regulatory-commission/

2 https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025

3 https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/the-us-transition-ahead-booming-energy-demand-shifting-mobility/

4 https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025

5 https://prod.nerc.com/globalassets/our-work/assessments/nerc_ltra_2025.pdf

6 https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/nuclear-energy/small-modular-reactors_en

7 https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs

8 https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025

9 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-approves-nuscale-powers-uprated-small-modular-reactor-design

10 https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q1-2026-climate-tech-vc-trends

11 https://www.eurelectric.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260212-Battle-tested-power-systems-FINAL.pdf ; https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-uae-nuclear-drones-71e7e58f45193b7dee3df28740532a7b

12 https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/

13 https://nextgpower.com/bess-vs-gas-peaker-plants-why-2026-is-the-economic-technical-tipping-point-for-grid-storage/

14 https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/how-spain-became-europes-green-energy-standout