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Tempering ambition
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
I spent a fair amount of time over the holiday break pondering the makings of a good year for nuclear technology in 2026.
Last year was white-hot. Between the fundamental upward shift in domestic electricity demand, the continuing proliferation of data center projects in all corners of the U.S., the increasingly voracious appetite of the financial markets for nuclear investment, and the Trump administration’s full-throttle approach to nuclear policy, 2025 will likely be remembered as a significant, positive inflection point in the history of the harnessed atom.
I hope 2026 will be even better, but for it to be so, it will have to be different. It needs a seriousness about it, a scrape of the froth. Advanced nuclear energy technology is in a hardening phase at the moment, where the green shoots of innovation must now grow into robust commercial enterprises capable of scaling quickly and safely. Not everyone will succeed.
Arjun Earthperson (NCSU), Priyanka M. Pandit (NCSU), Mihai A. Diaconeasa (NCSU)
Proceedings | Advanced Reactor Safety (ARS) | Las Vegas, NV, June 16-19, 2024 | Pages 410-419
