T.S. Eliot so memorably reminded us back in 1936: “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” And I’ve discovered over the years that those who support nuclear power can bear almost no reality whatsoever!

Ongoing, massively over-the-top pro-nuclear hype is an almost entirely reality-free zone. Paradoxically, it would seem, the worse the prospects for nuclear power become in reality, the greater the level of hype.

First, just a quick reminder of that reality. The one authoritative source of data (grudgingly accepted even by the nuclear industry) is the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR). The most recent was published back in January this year and provides a pretty stark picture as to what's happening on the ground.

Just four new reactors came online during 2025 (three in China and one each in Russia and India), but seven closed down permanently (three in Belgium, three in Russia, and one in Taiwan), making it the worst ‘net decline’ in operating reactors since the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Globally, 404 reactors were in operation (34 fewer than the ‘peak year’ of 2002), providing just 9% of global electricity, barely half the historic high of 17.5% in 1996.

Nuclear advocates are quick to point out that construction work started on eleven new reactors but rather slower to mention that nine of them are in China. And just to be crystal clear: not one of those construction starts involved a small modular reactor, a molten salt reactor, a fast neutron reactor, or a fusion reactor—although you might have imagined that dozens of these were now popping up all over the place if you've been exposed to standard nuclear hype. Plenty of promises out there, with billions of dollars to be splashed out here and billions of dollars there, but on the ground, which is where reality is to be found, not so much.

This kind of data may come as a bit of a revelation to those untutored in the dark arts of nuclear propaganda. According to the industry, we're apparently in the middle of a ‘golden age,’ both for big, old-style reactors (despite the fact that only two are under construction in Europe, in Slovenia and at Hinkley Point in the UK, and none at all in the US since the massively over-budget Plant Vogtle in Georgia came online in May 2024) and for small modular reactors.

My most benign interpretation of this gap between reality and hype is that they all fervently hope that reality-mongers like me will be proved wrong, and that nuclear power (big and small) will soon come into its own again, delivering massive benefits for both consumers and investors—and for Planet Earth, of course.

But I've also learned over the years that there's something much less benign going on—and it's all to do with the Lord of the Rings. If you think about it, nuclear power is a technology that could have been purpose-built for the Vaults of Mordor, the realm of the Dark Lord Sauron, populated by Orcs, Trolls, and other grotesque and misbegotten creatures. Hugely powerful but malignant, very dangerous, and creating huge amounts of lethal waste. By contrast, renewables have always been a bit homespun and hobbity, providing lots of nice clean energy to meet the simple requirements of the Shire. Powerful men, with lots of money and more than a touch of the sulphurous about them, find it demeaning to have to mix with the little people and the renewably simple-minded.

How else can one explain Donald Trump's pathological aversion to wind turbines? He seems to be driven crazy by the fact that he can still see lots of them out at sea when visiting his golf courses in Scotland and set out single-handedly to close down America's nascent offshore wind industry—unsuccessfully, as it happens.

Over the years, he's offered up a fantastically creative repertoire of totally mendacious reasons to justify this aversion, many of which got an airing at the World Economic Forum in January this year. He enthusiastically berated his audience of the great and the good as “total losers” for supporting renewables.

He also rather astonished the audience by telling them that China is “very smart” in manufacturing “most of the world's wind turbines. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them but don't use them themselves. I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China. ”.

That would have come as something of a shock to China's massive wind industry—including its 8,000 huge offshore wind turbines, roughly 50% of the world's offshore total. And construction will soon be completed on the world's largest wind farm, in the Gobi Desert, with 7,000 individual turbines generating 20,000 MW!

We know that President Trump loves coal, but here's a rather pleasing statistic in that regard: wind power provides about 16% of all electricity in China (with a population of 1.4 billion), and coal provides exactly the same amount in the USA, with just 340 million people! But wind power is on the up in China, and coal power is indisputably heading down in the USA.

Most Americans simply don't understand what's going on in China. As Bloomberg reported recently, China has installed the equivalent of the entire US grid in just the last four years. And about 80% of that new generation was from solar and wind. The Dark Lord Sauron will undoubtedly be spinning in whatever passes as an appropriate resting placeyet again, those bloody little Hobbits from the Shire are taking over!

To be fair, China has absolutely not given up on nuclear power. In fact, without China's investment in nuclear, it would have been curtains for the industry long ago. The total number of reactors under construction globally is around 66, with China accounting for more than half of that total.

But it's important to keep even this somewhat rosier nuclear outlook in perspective. Last year (I'm referring again to the WNISR 2025 data), China's new nuclear capacity in that year amounted to 2,500 MW. But you have to compare that with new solar capacity—at a mighty 275,000 MW—more than a hundred times as much in one year!

Read the room, folks! No industry can thrive on hype alone, not even the nuclear industry. It’s time for all those still intent on descending into the Vaults of Mordor to start bearing a little bit more hobbity reality.