Siemens, Meta and others want to triple nuclear power in the world by 2050
A number of large companies want to triple their nuclear energy capacities by 2050. They see rising demand for electricity.
Aerial view of the decommissioned Isar 2.
(Image: E.ON Kernkraft GmbH CC BY-SA 3.0)
For a long time, the world was supposed to become a place with less nuclear power, but various large companies are joining forces to call for a radical change of course: global nuclear energy capacity is to triple by 2050. Google, Meta, Amazon and other companies have now signed a declaration of intent to this effect by the World Nuclear Association. They all see this step as unavoidable due to the increasing demand for energy.
The declaration comes from the World Nuclear Association, a global industry association for nuclear energy, so to speak. The signatories are mostly from Big Tech, the energy sector, the shipping industry or the industrial sector, and the German electrical and energy technology manufacturer Siemens Energy AG is also on the list of signatories.
Growing hunger for energy
The declaration emphasizes that, considering the growing global economy, the demand for electricity will rise sharply – despite major efforts to improve energy efficiency. To ensure continuous availability, especially for large-scale consumers, the signatories insist on nuclear energy. In the interests of economic growth, the share of nuclear energy in a diverse energy mix should therefore also increase. A reliable infrastructure is also essential to secure the supply. There are currently around 440 nuclear reactors in the world, which supply around nine percent of the world's electricity.
Nuclear energy plays a decisive role in the tech sector in particular, through increasing electrification, in industrial processes with high temperatures, in hydrogen production, in the supply of heating and in the production of synthetic fuels.
Energy for data centers
Data centers for artificial intelligence, for example, are incredibly power-hungry. Tech companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft have therefore already sought direct connections to nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the USA. This is easier said than done.
The signatories of the paper are not alone in their intention. It is a further step on the agenda that 20 heads of state and government have already signed up to. At the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 in Dubai at the end of November, they announced for the first time that they wanted to ensure that the capacity of all operational nuclear power plants worldwide triples by 2050. This is the result of a declaration of intent presented by French President Emmanuel Macron.
The massive expansion of nuclear energy is intended to help limit global warming as much as possible and prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees. At the same time, the states want to ensure that nuclear power plants are operated "responsibly" and "in accordance with the highest standards of safety, sustainability and non-proliferation" and that waste disposal is regulated for the long term. The dangers of nuclear energy were made clear by devastating reactor accidents in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 and Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The decades-long consequences for people and the environment are fatal.
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