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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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NN Asks: What hurdles stand in the way of nuclear power’s global expansion?
Jake Jurewicz
Nuclear technology is mature. It provides firm power at scale with minimal externalities and has done so for decades. The core problem isn’t about the technology—it is how the plants are built. Nuclear construction has a well-documented history of cost and schedule overruns. Previous nuclear plants often spent more than twice what was first budgeted, making nuclear among the power technologies with the largest average cost overruns worldwide.
Recent projects illustrate how severe the problem can be. In South Carolina, the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion saw projected costs rise from roughly $10 billion to more than $25 billion before the project was abandoned in 2017, by which time more than $9 billion had already been spent and customers were stuck paying for a site they have yet to benefit from.
2022 ANS Annual Meeting
Dr. Kathy McCarthy, Associate Laboratory Director for the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate, joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) after three years as Vice President for Science and Technology and Laboratory Director for the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. She previously held a variety of engineering and leadership roles at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), including Director of Domestic Programs in INL’s Nuclear Science and Technology Directorate, Director of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Technical Integration Office, and National Technical Director for the Systems Analysis Campaign for DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Fuel Cycle R&D Program.
McCarthy began her career in fusion technology with a focus on liquid metal blanket designs. She was a participant in the US DOE US-USSR Young Scientist program, which included working at the Efremov Institute in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, the Latvian Academy of Sciences in Riga, Latvia, and the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia, and was also a Guest Scientist at the Kernforschungzentrum Karlsruhe (now the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) in Karlsruhe, West Germany.
McCarthy earned her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a major field of fusion engineering and minor fields of nuclear science and engineering, and physics – electricity and magnetism. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2019 and has received two American Nuclear Society (ANS) presidential citations. Her awards include the 1996 ITER US Home Team Leadership Award, and the 1994 David Rose Award for Excellence in Fusion Engineering. McCarthy served on the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee from 1999 to 2013 and on the US ITER Technical Advisory Committee from 2010 to 2013 and has held numerous ANS leadership positions. She was elected as a fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 2021.
Last modified May 26, 2022, 6:52am PDT
