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Amazon, Google and Meta have joined the call from large-scale government and utility energy-intensive companies to build more nuclear power with the latest boost to the industry’s revival.
Occidental and chemical producer Dow, the petroleum group, is one of eight large energy buyers to sign a pledge in favor of its goal of tripling its nuclear capacity by 2050. The statement was coordinated by the Global Atomic Energy Association, a sector advocacy group.
Additionally, Microsoft and Apple, which use a significant amount of energy and are committed to reducing carbon footprint, did not sign a statement.
The support show follows similar pledges by 2014 of the world’s biggest financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, in September, to increase support for the sector and endorse calls made at the COP28 United Nations Climate Conference for Nuclear Power by 2050.
Amazon said investing more than $1 billion in the nuclear industry over the past year and speeding up new power plants is “important” to US security, helping them meet increasing energy demand and combat climate change.
According to the WNA, eight new reactors from around the world have been connected to grids around the world, with construction beginning at 12, as COP28 in November 2023.
Urvi Parekh, Meta’s energy director, said tech companies supported the pledge because they believed the challenge of building expensive nuclear power plants required significant coordination between developers, utilities, governments and electricity consumers.
She added that the announcement is intended to encourage the government to smoothen regulations for the expansion of nuclear power generation and signal utility that there are buyers for electricity. Last year, Meta issued a bid for a new 1-4 gigawatt nuclear power project to get online in the 2030s.
With the revival of nuclear weapons, some countries have begun to change their policies, including Japan. This said last month that it hopes that Mix’s nuclear power share will rise from 8.5% in 2023 to about 20% by 2040.
“We are not only regenerating existing plants, but we are building a new generation,” said Takehiko of Matsuo, Vice President of International Affairs at the Department of Economics, Trade and Industry at Cerawek, the annual energy conference held in Houston on Tuesday. Japan’s move towards nuclear power was driven primarily by increased electricity demand, he said.
Last month, the Italian government introduced a bill to a state-based parliament to reintroduce nuclear power, which was phased out after the 1987 referendum.
Despite the high costs, the nuclear industry has been supported by increased electricity demand in developed economies and forecasts from the International Energy Agency, where demand will increase by 3% per year over the next decade.
However, developers of next-generation nuclear technologies, including small modular reactors, still face technical, regulatory and funding risks.
The Technology Group has signed dozens of non-binding memorandums with SMR developers, but only a handful are funding the project.
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“There is no evidence that this is commercial viability,” said Lawrence Coven, chief executive of NRG, a large power plant that announced its partnership with gas-fired power plants last month.
The so-called hyperschool with large-scale cloud computing and data businesses “doesn’t count” for nuclear weapons, Coven said. “If there were big penalties and payments, if we didn’t deliver by 2035, that would be more interesting to me. But that’s not what those contracts say,” he added.
John Ketchum, chief executive of Nextera Energy, which operates one of the largest nuclear fleets in the United States, told the Financial Times that new nuclear power generation will take up to “after 2035,” saying “we still have to develop the first development of the kind of advanced nuclear unit that will function.”
Brian Savoy, chief financial officer at Utility Duke Energy, said he does not expect SMR to play a meaningful role until the late 2030s after the company’s revenue last month.
