A new dawn for nuclear energy?

Small modular reactors can have enormous implications for energy transition in India

A weak economic case and the Fukushima accident had created pessimism about nuclear energy worldwide. That picture is changing. Technical improvements are improving safety and business viability. The Ukraine war and global warming have created a fresh urgency to get away from fossil fuels. In the US, a new design of a 50-megawatt (MW) “small modular reactor” (SMR) recently got regulatory approval. If SMRs make it into assembly line production, there will be big gains on price.

After the accidents at Three Mile Island in the US (1979), Chernobyl in the USSR (1986), and particularly Fukushima in Japan (2011), there was