“Nuclear energy is at an inflection point,” writes Catherine Clifford in an August 3 article for CNBC, due to promising new technology and the urgent call to fight climate change. “Nuclear energy is getting a second shot at becoming a prominent part of the global energy grid.”
Clifford reports that demand for advanced nuclear reactors will be worth $1 trillion globally, according to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
Serva CEO Ian Horvath says that estimate is low.
“A true clean sustainable energy future will require about 1200 gigawatts of new baseload power, so the expenditures needed will be more on the order of $4 trillion dollars,” says Horvath. “This may sound high, but compared to the high costs of burning a finite supply of coal along with its expense to the environment and well-documented hindrance to human health in not just the neighborhoods near these plants but also to major populations downstream of their exhaust, it becomes comparatively cheap.”
