The nuclear share of electricity generation in China has fallen for four years in a row after peaking at 5.0 percent in 2021. This is despite China’s status as the only significant growth market in the world, with a net growth of around 50 reactors over the past 20 years and a net decline of around 50 reactors in the rest of the world.
Generation
Conspicuously absent from the lists of reactor startups and construction starts are any small modular reactors or any ‘Generation IV’ reactors such as fast neutron reactors, fusion reactors, molten salt reactors, etc.
Globally, the number of power reactors under construction increased by seven in 2025 – entirely due to China. China has 36 reactors under construction, more than half of the global total of 66.
Not a single power reactor is under construction across the 35 countries of the American continent.
Only one reactor is under construction in the European Union – in Slovakia. Solar and wind is now providing 30 percent of EU electricity generation when combined, having now overtaken fossil fuels at 29 percent.
All renewables, including hydro, accounted for 47.7 percent of EU electricity generation while nuclear now accounts for less than half that amount, at just 23.4 percent.
Catastrophe
Chinese and Russian companies have been the only builders responsible for reactor construction starts worldwide over the last six-years, with the exception of one project in South Korea. Only Russia, China and France are building reactors abroad.
The report WNISR notes that of the total of 66 reactors under construction in 11 countries, 63, or 95 per cent, are either in nuclear-weapon states (50) or are implemented by companies controlled by nuclear-weapon states in other countries (13). Only the three construction projects in South Korea fall outside this category.
Iran’s uranium enrichment programme drew attention to the potential to weaponise the ‘peaceful atom’ and the military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year by Israel and the US added to the long history of nation states attacking nuclear plants to prevent weapons proliferation, among other reasons.
Other examples of conventional military attacks on nuclear plants to prevent weapons proliferation include Israel’s destruction of reactor components awaiting shipment to Iraq, in France in 1979; Israel’s destruction of a research reactor in Iraq in 1981; military strikes by Iraq and Iran on each other’s nuclear facilities during the 1980 to 88 war; the United States’ destruction of a research reactor in Iraq in 1991; Iraq’s attempted missile strikes on Israel’s nuclear facilities in 1991; and Israel’s bombing of a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria in 2007.
Russia’s attacks on nuclear plants in Ukraine probably aren’t motivated by weapons proliferation concerns. Nonetheless, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe on top of the ongoing mass murder of conventional warfare highlights the role of nuclear plants as stationary terrorist targets or weapons of mass destruction.
Potential
Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, recently said that fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has left Europe’s largest nuclear facility in an “extremely fragile, volatile condition”.
Apart from Zaporizhzhia, low-lights during 2025 included a drone attack which seriously damaged the protective dome over the stricken Chernobyl number four reactor.
There were at least 10 further attacks on nuclear power plant substations in Ukraine which are, according to the IAEA, “essential for nuclear safety and security” and “absolutely indispensable for providing the electricity all nuclear power plants need for reactor cooling and other safety systems”.
Despite the 25-year pattern of stagnation, the World Nuclear Association claims that global nuclear power capacity could more than triple to reach 1,446 GW by 2050. But there is plenty of fine-print undermining the absurd projection.
A big chunk of the projected growth (542 GW) “is not yet supported by identified projects”. Another big chunk (425 GW) comprises reactors that are planned, proposed or potential. These are all essentially meaningless categories.
Aging
A “substantial” share of the required capacity growth depends “on large-scale programmes for proposed, potential, and government-targeted capacity that are not yet supported by firm investment decisions”.
The required 65 GW per year from 2046 to 2050 is “roughly double the historic peak build rate seen in the 1980s”. Achieving the projection will require “unprecedented construction rates, strategic lifetime extension of existing reactors, and significant policy and market reforms”.
Several national targets, such as the 293 GW of new capacity required to meet the United States’ 400 GW target, “rely heavily on an expansion of nuclear capacity where there is currently little or no ongoing construction, or identified reactors planned or proposed for deployment”.
A much more likely scenario is that the past 25 years of nuclear stagnation will be followed by another 25 years of stagnation. If there is any growth – and there may not be due to the aging of the global reactor fleet and the industry’s other challenges – it will be marginal.
Out-generate
The fizzling out of the nuclear industry stands in stark contrast to the explosion in renewables. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts the installation of 4,600 GW of new renewable capacity in the five years from 2025 to 2030, which is twice as much as in the previous five years.
Renewables will surpass coal as a source of energy at the end of 2025, or by mid-2026 at the latest, to become the largest source of electricity generation globally, according to an IEA statement from October 2025. The World Economic Forum states that renewables overtook coal in the first half of 2025.
The share of renewables in global electricity generation is projected to rise from 32 percent in 2024 to 43 percent by 2030, according to the IEA. From 2025-2030, renewables are expected to meet over 90 percent of global electricity demand growth.
We’ve seen renewable electricity generation double then triple nuclear power generation over the past decade. By the end of this decade renewables will out-generate nuclear by a factor of five to seven.
This Author
Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.