IAEA Triples Nuclear Power Forecast With SMRs Central to North American Build
The agency projects global nuclear capacity reaching 1,284 GW(e) by 2060, with small modular reactors expected to account for roughly 60% of new North American additions.
The International Atomic Energy Agency published a new long-term nuclear power forecast on September 19, 2026, projecting global generating capacity could reach 1,284 gigawatts electric by 2060 in the high-growth case. The agency counted 377.1 GW(e) operating across 413 reactors worldwide at the end of 2025, meaning the high case implies more than a tripling of the current fleet over three-and-a-half decades. The revision extends a pattern of upward adjustments as construction activity across Asia and renewed interest in North America have outpaced earlier models.3,2
Small modular reactors sit at the centre of the projection. The agency expects about 60% of new nuclear additions in North America to come from SMRs, citing "particularly strong" uptake in the region. That makes the forecast unusually dependent on a technology type that has yet to reach commercial-scale deployment in most markets outside China.3
Goldman Sachs has done its own arithmetic on what SMR deployment at scale implies for uranium supply. In a research note, the bank put global SMR deployment at up to 46 GW by 2045. At that scale, Goldman Sachs estimated the cumulative supply-demand gap in the uranium market could reach 2.332 billion pounds by 2045 — a figure long-term fuel buyers and uranium miners will track regardless of how the IAEA's broader capacity numbers resolve.1
Central and Eastern Asia carries the largest projected additions of any region. The IAEA sees capacity there rising to 407 GW(e) by 2060 from 114 GW(e) in 2025, a near-quadrupling driven primarily by Chinese state-backed construction programs that carry lower execution risk than the private-sector SMR pipeline in North America. If that regional projection delivers, Central and Eastern Asia alone would surpass the entire current global reactor fleet.2
Beyond those two regions, the IAEA projects South-Eastern Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean each to see SMRs account for 40% of new nuclear additions. Notably, those proportions hold in both the high and low scenarios. Neither region has a large operating fleet, so the projections carry more uncertainty than those anchored to existing Chinese or North American programs.3
The agency has revised its nuclear forecasts upward before. Earlier long-range outlooks were undermined by cost overruns and schedule slippage at conventional large-reactor projects in Western Europe and the United States. The new report channels growth through the SMR pathway to address that credibility gap. But commercial-scale SMR deployment remains unproven outside China, and the distance between projected build rates and actual permitted, financed projects is considerable.3
Equity markets offered a counterpoint on September 19, 2026's close. The uranium ETF URA closed at $41.65, down 2.94%, while the coal ETF COAL fell 3.10% to $25.00 in the same session. Neither move directly reflects long-term reactor fuel demand, but the combined direction on the day the IAEA report landed suggests near-term equity positioning on the nuclear buildout theme was moving in the opposite direction from the headline forecast.3
The uranium supply gap Goldman Sachs identified becomes a live market signal only when utilities begin signing long-term off-take contracts for first-of-kind SMR projects. North American developers have signalled order books and government support for several years. Fleet-scale commercial contracting has not followed. Until it does, the spread between the IAEA's high-case projections and contracted capacity is the number investors and uranium suppliers are actually positioned around.1