IAEA Triples Nuclear Power Forecast on SMR Deployment Shift
The agency's high-case projection of 1,284 GW(e) by 2060 is the most ambitious official nuclear forecast in years, with Asia carrying most of the projected build.
The IAEA has tripled its long-term nuclear power forecast, projecting global capacity could reach 1,284 gigawatts electric by 2060 in its high-case scenario, OilPrice reported Saturday (2026-09-19), with the agency's upgraded view driven in part by shifting expectations for small modular reactor deployment. The revision represents a significant step up from the 372 GW of installed capacity recorded last year.5,4,2
BNEF's own near-term view is more conservative. The consultancy forecasts global nuclear capacity rising to 535 GW by 2036 — a 44% increase from last year's installed base — without projecting out to the IAEA's 2060 ceiling. Bridging those numbers requires SMR commercialisation to deliver at a pace not yet demonstrated at scale.2
Asia is carrying the bulk of projected additions. Central and Eastern Asia alone could grow from 114 GW(e) in 2025 to 407 GW(e) by 2060, asian-power.com reported Wednesday (2026-09-16), the largest regional share of any geography in the IAEA's scenario. China's trajectory is particularly steep. OilPrice reported Sunday (2026-09-20) that the country's nuclear sector is expanding fast enough to overtake both France and the United States as the world's leading nuclear power producer within roughly a decade, with the US currently holding the top position.4,6
SMRs are the technology that makes the IAEA's upper-end numbers plausible. Unlike conventional large plants, which typically span a square mile, smaller units require only 5% to 10% of that footprint, reducing site complexity and potentially compressing build timelines, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Construction costs still absorb roughly 70% of a plant's total expense — the pressure point that has killed previous expansion cycles — though SMR proponents argue modular fabrication changes that dynamic. Commercial evidence on this remains thin.3,5
Investment is already moving ahead of that evidence. Nuclear spending has grown more than 70% over the past five years, and the IEA expects annual nuclear investment to top $100 billion under stated-policies scenarios. The agency separately projects more than 70 GW of new capacity coming online by the mid-2030s — one of the strongest near-term pipelines in three decades, Forbes reported.1
Demand is arriving faster than most planners expected. IEA data show US data-centre power consumption set to more than triple over the next decade, from 34.7 GW in 2024 to 106 GW by 2035. Global data-centre investment has already reached roughly $580 billion, per IEA figures cited by Forbes, with Microsoft, Amazon and Google each signing nuclear offtake deals, though volumes were not specified in the Forbes report.1
Policy ambition has solidified on both sides of the Atlantic. Washington has set a target to quadruple US nuclear capacity by 2050 and is pursuing faster permitting for advanced reactor designs. In March 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Europe's retreat from nuclear energy a strategic mistake and pledged €200 million for a new generation of SMRs.1
Nuclear already supplies roughly 18% of US electricity, second only to natural gas as a single source of American generation, according to the Christian Science Monitor. That existing fleet provides the licensing and operational infrastructure from which any expansion would scale — but it took decades to build and a long period of stagnation followed.3
Yet the market is not pricing in the IAEA's high case. The URA uranium exchange-traded fund fell 3.5% on Wednesday (2026-09-23), even as the forecast revision drew wide coverage. Spot fuel markets respond to near-term supply and demand signals, not 35-year scenarios. The IEA's 70-GW mid-2030s pipeline is the most ambitious in three decades on paper. Project execution is where the previous two nuclear expansion cycles stalled — and SMRs have yet to deliver a first-of-kind commercial unit. That gap is what investors in uranium and reactor developers will be watching as the first concrete SMR orders move toward construction decisions.2,1