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It’s no secret that nuclear power will need to play a role in helping us avoid the worst impacts of climate change and enhance the energy security of the United States, along with our allies and partners.
Nuclear energy is the nation’s largest source of clean power and avoids more than 470 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, which is the equivalent of removing 100 million cars from the road.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates we’ll need an additional 200 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear capacity to keep pace with future power demands and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
But how will we get there?
The United States just set new deployment targets at the U.N. climate summit (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The plan is to add 35 GW of new capacity by 2035 and achieve a sustained pace of 15 GW per year by 2040 to help keep us on track toward our ultimate goal.
The new framework is the first of its kind for our nuclear sector and identifies more than 30 actions the U.S. government can take, along with industry and power customers, to help expand our domestic capacity.
The targets also align with last year’s historic pledges at COP to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 and to secure a nuclear fuel supply chain that’s free from Russian influence.
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