The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025 highlights that, while global nuclear power output reached a record 2,677 terawatt-hours in 2024, mainly driven by China, nuclear energy continues to face challenges globally. Its share of electricity generation remains around 9%, as aging reactors, high costs, and project delays limit growth outside of China and Russia. Small modular reactors (SMRs), often seen as the future of nuclear, remain largely theoretical with no significant deployment in the West. Meanwhile, renewables and battery storage are rapidly gaining ground, with global investment and new capacity additions in wind, solar, and storage far outpacing nuclear. The report suggests that despite record output, nuclear power’s global relevance is declining amid the accelerating clean energy transition. They write:
Challenges of Integrating Nuclear Power into the Energy System
New energy technologies disrupt markets and systems. Photovoltaics directly produces electricity from solar radiation in harmless nanometer-thin semiconductor junctions allowing for ongoing steep cost reductions and performance increases. This is complemented by similar advances in power electronics and batteries. Together these new technologies are evolving towards a highly flexible fully electrified energy system with a decentralized control logic outcompeting traditional centralized fossil and nuclear systems. Nuclear energy increasingly has difficulties to survive in this context. 2024 has been a pivotal year as battery storage costs have dropped by 40 percent.
Solar Adds Hundreds of Gigawatts, Nuclear Remains Irrelevant in the Market
Deployment in 2024 corroborates the analysis of fundamentals. Storage has passed a trigger point, there are first signs of a revolution behind the meter, and low-income countries are starting to leapfrog. In 2024, total investment in non-hydro renewable electricity capacity reached a record US$728 billion, 21 times the reported global investment in nuclear energy. Solar and wind power capacities grew by 32 percent and 11 percent, respectively, resulting in 565 GW of combined new capacity—over 100 times the 5.4 GW of net nuclear capacity addition. Global wind and solar facilities generated 70 percent more electricity than nuclear plants.
China
Solar power generation increased by 44 percent compared to nuclear’s 3.7-percent growth. Solar and wind combined produced over four times as much power as nuclear reactors. Renewables, including hydro, generated 33.7 percent of power, while coal declined to 57.8 percent.
European Union
The 28-percent wind plus solar contribution to total electricity production outcompeted nuclear’s 23-percent share. The EU’s nuclear output increased slightly year-on-year but declined outside France.
India
Solar capacity grew by 34 percent with power generation increasing by 20 TWh. A new 0.63-GW reactor was connected to the grid in early 2024, and nuclear generation increased by 6 TWh to a total of 52 TWh. Solar plants generated 135 TWh, 2.6 times nuclear’s output.
United States
By the end of 2024, Texas alone had an installed capacity of almost 10 GW of grid-connected batteries, expected to double in 2025 to 20 GW. Texas has also been building up around 40 GW of solar and wind each and retiring fossil-fueled plants. It remains uncertain how much the current Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuels and pro-nuclear policies will impact state-level energy transition efforts.
Overall Conclusion
2024 has seen an unprecedented boost in solar and battery capacity expansion driven by continuous significant cost decline. As energy markets are rapidly evolving, there are no signs of vigorous nuclear construction and the slow decline of nuclear power’s role in electricity generation continues.
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