Small Nuclear Energy will help solve climate change

Climate change has had an enormous impact on our planet and is continuing to affect our earth daily. However we as humans have the ability to prevent further impact if we act now. This is a global problem and no one country alone can fix it. While climate science is fairly complicated; the majority of the world’s climate scientists are in agreement that carbon emissions are changing the climate in ways that are changing global temperatures. In recent years the consequences of climate change have become more serious. Every year new records are set. The world is experiencing more heat waves, and in fact the last 22 years have been the hottest on record. The world also has the most melting of ice ever recorded in the North Pole.

Climate Change has been a pivotal issue in public discussions

A Brief Background

The world has released over 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide or CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In 2019 alone, the world has released around 37 billion tons more. That’s 50% more than the world emissions in the year 2000 and almost three times emissions as much as 50 years ago. It’s not just CO2 that is causing global warming, the world is also releasing growing emissions of other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

If we stay on this course, our situation is not going to get any better. As we look into the future, the world’s population, according to the World Bank, will reach 10 billion by 2050. At the same time, the world’s demand for raw materials could double by 2060, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. These projections only mean that the world’s energy consumption is only going to get higher and consequently carbon emissions will keep rising despite the need to be reduced to zero. These future projections means that the transition to zero carbon needs needs to be accelerated as we progress into the future. One technology that can help this transition is the use of small modular nuclear reactors.

The State of Nuclear

Before going into more details about small modular nuclear reactors, we need to explore the state of the nuclear industry and its business dynamics. Looking at bulk financial numbers, the nuclear energy industry was worth 300 billion dollars in 2012. While from an…