Last year (2021) the world added 182 GW of solar PV and 90 GW of wind capacity.

Nuclear globally saw 5 GW of additions, and 8 GW of retirements, for a net -3 GW capacity. Nuclear additions will need to increase considerably to maintain net capacity as many retirements are scheduled in the next decade.

Given the data around capacity additions, growth rates, and learning rates, I'm really puzzled how you end up scoring nuclear well on your QUICK, ZERO, and FACILITATE criteria:

• "Criterion QUICK: An energy strategy must lead to the highest practically feasible near-term emission reductions for the actor’s energy system, without causing significant harm elsewhere."
• "Criterion ZERO: An energy strategy pursued by an actor must, with high chance of success, reduce the total greenhouse emissions of the actor’s energy system to zero in a suitable time frame, without increasing emissions elsewhere."
• "Criterion FACILITATE: An energy strategy must facilitate, rather than impede, the path toward global zero emissions, in a suitable time frame."

Zero-carbon energy technologies at <10 GW capacity additions per year with little to now growth over the last decade fail QUICK and ZERO. An energy technology also fails FACILITATE if it takes 5-7 years to become operational, and the same investment could have purchased more or cheaper zero-carbon resources such as VRE or efficiency that would be deployed sooner. The net result from delay nuclear entails may mean higher cumulative emissions.

It's also weird to me that you single out nuclear as the key to technology to pair with renewables when there are several other strategies to provide that firm generation role. Your same arguments apply to other technologies such as H2 CTs, storage, or hot rock geothermal. These all get much less advocacy support, but appear to have far better unit economics, and are more or less at similar levels of development and deployment to SMRs. They also don't entail any of the profileration, waste, and weapons concerns.

I'm not against nuclear, I just find the singular, fanatical support for it really odd given the technology landscape.

Lastly, no analysis of decarbonizing electricity is complete without acknowledging efficiency. All generation sources have negative externalities. Efficiency and demand response reduce electric demand and have large, positive externalities. Buildings are ~75% of the load on the grid. Most buildings are horribly inefficient - it's common to see a 3x difference in energy use between buildings of the same size and type. New buildings are getting much better. Building energy codes in developed countries are moving to net-zero as code by 2030. It's difficult to understate how significantly zero-energy codes will change the nature of the grid in the long run. Also, building floor area will triple by 2050, with most construction in countries without building energy codes. In the U.S., energy codes over the last 50 years have counterfactually reduced grid demand by ~60%. The same could be done for developing countries. Why don't grid modelers include energy efficiency potential in their models? Simple - they only focus on the supply side and treat demand as exogenous, because they don't have the expertise to do a bottom-up model of electric demand (yet - it has been done on city-scale projects). Seems to me efficiency is the closest thing to an ethical imperative if such imperatives meaningfully exist.

I found this article interesting, have an upvote. In particular I didn't know the dynamic around nuclear energy assistance being tied to nonproliferation agreements. That seems pretty cool. I'd be interested in more exploration of the effectiveness there, but I didn't read the cited paper, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

That said, I found this article disappointing. Like y'all, I agree that nuclear energy as many theoretical advantages. However, tragically, those advantages seem stymied by:

1. Unfriendly regulation
2. A really bad case of cost disease^[1] (which may be a function of the regulation, or may not, we can for now just observe the costs)

If we don't fix those, we won't see nuclear energy becoming a particularly relevant factor. I'm all for fixing those! And I was mostly expect to see y'all explain a well-worked and/or convincing argument for optimism there. You did address both, and I'll attempt to summarize them both, please let me know if you disagree:

1. "Indeed, in some parts of the world nuclear energy has the potential to engage the traditionally “climate-sceptical” political right. Successful bipartisan legislative initiatives in the US to speed up the development of advanced nuclear reactors reflect this. It should also be noted that, even in nuclear-sceptical western countries, the popular acceptance of nuclear energy is highest among those who are living closest to nuclear reactors." (No summary needed! I can quote your entire argument in three sentences!)
2. Rougher summary for the economic challenges:
   1. Nuclear used to be cost-competitive in the west in the 60s-80s, and still is competitive in some parts of Asia.
   2. We can pursue approaches to cutting costs. Building automation, and Small Modular Reactors seem promising.

I will first of all grant that I am much more optimistic about nuclear energy in Asia, given what you write, which again, super interesting article, thanks a bunch.

For the rest however, I found the arguments underdeveloped. To briefly respond: All of the regulatory factors you mention are not new. Maybe we're at the crux of an imminent shift in public opinion, but I feel like I'd need more convincing. And for costs, there have been strong economic incentives to lower costs for a long time. Any good technologist always has a story for how their technology will reduce in costs and/or get better soon. Nevertheless, one should be skeptical of such claims. And I feel not-particularly compelled by this story.

It seems plausible to me that there's a role for nuclear energy policy advocacy in the portfolio of solutions to climate change, but it seems smaller than the summary here makes it out to be, and I don't currently see what it is.

1. ^{^}

   In keeping with a local dialect, I use cost disease in a slightly nonstandard, broader sense, which I got from Scott Alexander / Tyler Cowen.