The whole world is on aggregate bearish on nuclear electricity - its share of global electricity generation has fallen from about 18% in the mid 1990s to about

The whole world is on aggregate bearish on nuclear electricity - its share of global electricity generation has fallen from about 18% in the mid 1990s to about 10% today. The reason is simply economics/cost. In the late 1980s in most of the world, the focus of new generation capacity switched to coal and natural gas as it became obvious that the price of nuclear on a per-MWh basis is multiples of times that of NG in particular. Nuclear is not and never was cheap. The second issue with nuclear is project risk - the industry has a disastrous record for delivering late and way over budget. For example, since 1990 only three new reactors have started operations in the USA. Watts Bar 2 went live in 2016 having originally started construction in 1974 [2]. The other two: Watts Bar 1 and Comanche Peak 2 took nearly 20 years each to go live. These aren't outliers - in Europe, two projects based on the newest 3rd generation reactor design - Flamanville and Olkiluoko - started construction in 2007 and 2005 respectively and both are years over schedule and are now expected to cost 6 and 3 times their budgets respectively. Work on this particular reactor design started in 1990 - which gives you an idea of what's involved in bringing new reactor designs to the commercial reality. A coal or gas plant can be up and running in 2-5 years with no long tails. A solar PV plant or on-shore wind farm can be constructed in a year or two with little or no risk of massive delays and budget overruns. And both options deliver cheaper electricity. It's just too expensive and niche in the modern world. In the age of mass-production where wind turbines and solar PV panels are rolling off assembly lines, the idea of spending $12B (Olkiluoto) or $25B (Flamanville) for a single 1.6GW reactor seems nuts. [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-electricity-generation-mix-by-fuel-1971-2019 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-electri... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant