Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

By: Rayan Dewan

Edited By: Jack Yang

The modern energy sector was built on coal. During Britain’s Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, coal began to replace human labor on a scale that reshaped civilization. Instead of using people or animals to power production, coal was used to fuel steam engines that could run factories, pump water from mines and move goods more efficiently than manual work ever could. Coal powered the steam engines that drove railways, fueled the furnaces that produced steel and eventually generated some of the first commercial electricity in the 1880s. When Thomas Edison opened the Pearl Street Station in New York, it ran on coal, and much of the world’s early electrical infrastructure followed this model. Even into the early 2000s, coal accounted for about 40% of global electricity production. Entire economies had been built around it. Yet as time went on, another resource was quietly rising in importance. Unlike coal, which powered factories and electricity, this new resource would transform transportation, geopolitics and the global economy itself. This one reshaped the global energy sector even more dramatically.

Oil completely changed the energy sector. It was easier to move, packed more energy and worked perfectly for the new internal combustion engines that powered cars, trucks and airplanes. Everyone quickly saw how useful and important oil was. However, that understanding was not fully cemented until after World War II. When a devastated Europe turned to the United States for reconstruction, American oil was supplied in massive quantities to help rebuild economies and power industries. This established the United States as the dominant global superpower in the postwar era. However, that generosity came at a cost. Supplying so much oil meant drawing heavily from America’s own domestic reserves. Because of this, people began to realize something important: the countries with the most oil often held the most power. Nations sitting atop large oil reserves started to understand they possessed something more valuable than just a fuel source. They had geopolitical leverage. This realization triggered a global scramble for petroleum resources that would shape global energy markets for decades. The world saw just how powerful oil could be during the OPEC embargoes of the 1970s, when several oil-producing countries cut off exports to the United States and its allies, causing prices to surge and fuel shortages across the country. These events made it clear how dependent modern civilization had become on a single, finite and unevenly distributed resource. That same vulnerability still exists today. Tensions in regions like the Strait of Hormuz, where a large portion of the world’s oil passes through, continue to threaten supply and can quickly drive up prices and destabilize global markets.

Over time, natural gas also became a major part of the global energy mix. While oil was mainly used for transportation, natural gas started being used to power homes and generate electricity. It burned cleaner than coal, was cheaper to run and produced about 50% less CO2 than coal and roughly 30% less than oil. Because of this, it was often marketed as a cleaner alternative. Today, natural gas accounts for about 23% of global energy consumption and nearly a third of electricity generation in the United States alone. The Earth does not have a shortage of it either. Natural gas reserves are large enough that running out is not a real near-term concern. But there is one major problem. During drilling and extraction, natural gas can leak methane directly into the atmosphere, and methane is about 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 over the short term. On paper, it can look like progress, but the full climate impact tells a different story. The world had found something cleaner, but not actually clean.

Today, the global energy sector is caught between where it has been and where it needs to go. Renewable energy has made real progress. Solar costs have fallen by more than 90% since 2010, with wind power seeing similar declines, and together they now account for the majority of new electricity capacity being built around the world. But progress on paper and progress on the ground are not the same thing. Fossil fuels still supply around 80% of the world’s total energy, and coal and natural gas account for more than 60% of global electricity generation. Renewable sources like solar and wind do not produce power continuously, as their output depends on weather and time of day, and current storage technology is not yet sufficient to fully offset that variability. At the same time, the current energy system may not be able to keep up with the level of demand expected in the years ahead. Electricity demand is rising faster than many people predicted, driven largely by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. A single large AI data center can consume as much power as a mid-sized city, and unlike most traditional electricity demand, it runs constantly, 24 hours a day. The energy system we have today was never designed for that kind of constant demand, and renewable energy alone may not be able to meet it reliably. That growing gap between supply and demand is what has brought nuclear energy back into the conversation.

The push for nuclear energy began in the early 1950s. In 1953, President Eisenhower introduced the Atoms for Peace program. The idea was to take the technology behind the atomic bomb and transform it into a source of energy. Scientists wanted to harness the energy produced by nuclear reactions and use it to generate electricity around the world. Nuclear power works through a process called fission, where uranium atoms are split to release enormous amounts of heat, which is then used to boil water, create steam and spin turbines that generate electricity. For a while, it seemed like it was working. By the 1970s, nuclear power had become an established part of the energy sector. It was supplying about 10% of the electricity in the United States, and more and more reactors were being built across North America and Europe. The costs were manageable, the technology was improving and many people believed nuclear could eventually become a dominant energy source of the future.

However, that confidence did not last. In 1979, a series of equipment failures and operator mistakes at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania caused the reactor to overheat and partially melt down. Even though most of the radiation was contained and did not escape, the event deeply scared the public. Then, seven years later, came the infamous Chernobyl disaster. During a poorly run safety test at a nuclear plant in the Soviet Union, a power surge caused the reactor to explode and completely destroy the facility. Radioactive material was released into the atmosphere, and many people nearby died from radiation exposure. The surrounding area was permanently closed off. Images and stories from the disaster spread across the world, and the public reaction was intense. Trust in nuclear energy collapsed. People were scared of it and wanted nothing to do with it. After Chernobyl, the industry slowed dramatically. Governments canceled reactor projects, investments in the field stalled, and nuclear energy went from being seen as the future to something many countries wanted to avoid.

Even after the fear and negative reputation that followed Chernobyl, the problems facing the energy sector never went away. If anything, they became more urgent. Global energy demand continued to climb, and it became clear that the world needed something cleaner and more powerful than what it had. Solar and wind energy have made real progress, but the numbers also show their limitations. A nuclear plant operates at over 90% capacity, meaning it produces near maximum power almost every hour of every day. Solar averages around 24%, and wind sits at roughly 36%. To match the output of a single 900-megawatt nuclear reactor, you would need nearly 800 wind turbines. Nuclear power also produces about twelve grams of CO₂ per kilowatt hour over its full lifecycle, roughly the same as wind and far below solar. Its energy density is even more striking. A uranium fuel pellet the size of a fingertip contains as much energy as 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil.

Because of these advantages, nuclear has the potential to reshape the energy sector in a major way, especially when you look at coal. Coal’s main role today is generating electricity, especially in large developing economies, and nuclear can produce that same power without the emissions. In fact, a lot of existing or retired coal plant sites in the United States could be used for nuclear reactors, since the land, grid connections and even parts of the workforce are already there. Replacing coal with nuclear isn’t simple or immediate, but those similarities make the transition more realistic than it might seem. Replacing coal plants at those sites alone could add more than 250 gigawatts of clean capacity to the grid. Oil is a bit different, since most of it is used for transportation rather than electricity. But as more countries push toward electric vehicles, the electricity powering those cars has to come from somewhere, and nuclear is well-suited to supply it reliably. Nuclear does have real drawbacks. Construction costs are high, projects take time and long-term radioactive waste storage is still a challenge. These are real issues, but they’re mostly problems of engineering and policy rather than limits of the technology itself. Nuclear isn’t meant to replace renewable energy. It works best alongside it. The future grid probably won’t be nuclear alone replacing renewables. More likely, nuclear will work alongside solar and wind to push coal and gas out of the system.

There are early signs of renewed momentum in the global nuclear industry. There are currently 440 reactors operating across 32 countries, and in 2024, they generated more electricity globally than in any year since 2006. At the same time, about 70 new reactors are currently under construction worldwide, a noticeable increase after decades of stagnation. The United States still runs the largest nuclear fleet on the planet with 94 active reactors, although most of them are aging and very few new ones have been built in recent decades. What is changing, however, is who is paying attention. Microsoft signed a deal to restart Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, specifically to power its AI data centers. Google contracted for 500 megawatts of new nuclear energy, while Amazon committed to five gigawatts while investing $500 million in advanced reactor company X-energy. These companies are not making these investments for symbolic reasons. They need large amounts of reliable, around-the-clock power and nuclear is one of the only clean energy sources that can consistently deliver that at scale. Private sector nuclear investment in 2024 exceeded the combined total of the previous four years. New technologies are also beginning to emerge, particularly small modular reactors, or SMRs, which are compact reactors designed to be built in factories and assembled on site faster than traditional plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency projects global nuclear capacity could reach 2.6 times its current level by 2050, potentially exceeding 1,000 gigawatts worldwide. More than 40 countries now include nuclear power in their national energy strategies. The industry that governments largely abandoned after Chernobyl is now being pursued by some of the most powerful companies and governments in the world.

The shift is not only visible in energy policy and technology development, but it is also beginning to show up in financial markets. No company illustrates this better than Cameco (CCJ), the Canadian uranium mining giant. For most of the 2010s, Cameco was a struggling business. Revenue fell from $2.4 billion in 2011 to $1.2 billion by 2021 as uranium prices collapsed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Then everything turned. As demand for nuclear energy began to rise again and uranium supply tightened, prices rebounded. By 2024, revenue had nearly doubled to $2.3 billion, the stock had risen more than 300% in four years, and utilities around the world were rushing to secure long-term uranium supply contracts. Today, Cameco produces around 16% of the world’s uranium and owns a 49% stake in Westinghouse Electric, the company behind the AP1000, one of the most advanced commercial nuclear reactors currently in operation. Cameco’s turnaround is not just a good business story. It is a signal. The uranium market is projected to grow from $4.7 billion to nearly $15 billion by 2033, reflecting growing expectations that nuclear demand will continue to rise in the years ahead.

This shift will not happen overnight. A large-scale transition toward nuclear energy will likely occur over the next 10 to 20 years as new reactors are built, old infrastructure is replaced, and investment continues to flow into the sector. It is a long horizon, but if that transition takes place, it could reshape the global energy system as we know it. The future of energy may very well be nuclear. The energy sector has always changed when it had no other choice. Coal’s dominance gradually declined as oil and natural gas took on larger roles, and each shift felt unlikely until it became necessary. Nuclear now stands at that same turning point. The fear that followed Chernobyl and Three Mile Island sidelined the industry for decades, but the world’s energy needs have grown too large and too urgent for that hesitation to last much longer. The demand is real, the investment is real and the technology is ready. Nuclear is not a last resort. It is the missing piece the modern energy grid has needed all along, and the evidence suggests the world is finally starting to act like it.