In 2023, more than 20 countries at the World Climate Action Summit of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) set the goal of tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Now, a new report from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency describes the daunting challenges involved in trying to meet that goal.

According to Nuclear Energy Outlook: Global Installed Capacity to 2050 and Beyond, expanding nuclear energy capacity to meet the COP28 target will require substantial acceleration in the growth of the nuclear workforce, supply chains, and financing availability. The report outlines four possible scenarios for how nuclear capacity could evolve by and past 2050: a “low” scenario, a “current trends” scenario, an “ambitious” scenario, and a “transformative” scenario.