For most of the 2010s, the annual World Nuclear Association symposium in London was an exercise in group therapy: an industry reeling from Fukushima, German shutdowns and a seven-year uranium bear market, explaining to an indifferent world why it deserved to exist. Not anymore.

This year’s gathering (Sept 9-11) drew a record crowd: attendance was up 17% from last year per BofA, with more than 1,000 delegates from 50 countries and 35 new WNA members. And the mood had changed completely. As Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel put it during his fireside chat:

“We don’t need to sell the [nuclear] story anymore, we just need to convert it to action.”

CIBC analyst Anita Soni, who also attended, summed up the three days the same way: “nuclear energy has largely won the policy and market acceptance debate, with attention now turning to execution at scale.” The question is no longer whether the world builds reactors, but whether anyone can build them on time and on budget. On that front, the industry’s track record needs little comment.

There’s also a catch that Gitzel, whose Cameco owns 49% of Westinghouse, was candid about: in the West, nobody wants to go first. “Everyone is racing for bronze,” he said. Most utilities would rather be the third to build a new large reactor than risk being the first. Constellation’s Jason Murphy confirmed this from a separate panel: CEG is one of the companies that would “prefer to be third, not first.” This is how you end up with a race in which all the runners stay at the starting line watching each other.

The symposium lined up nicely with the IAEA’s annual outlook, which raised its long-term nuclear projections for the sixth consecutive year. Under the high case, global capacity hits 1,045 GWe by 2050 (from 992 GWe in last year’s edition) and 1,284 GWe by 2060, or about 3.4x the 377 GWe operating at the end of 2025. Even the low case now roughly doubles capacity by 2060.

According to Northland’s Jeff Grampp, the more important point is that the low case moved most: +14% to 641 GWe, versus +5% for the high case. In his view this “suggests a de-risking of the long-term growth narrative.” North America’s low case also flipped from contraction last year to growth this year (136 GWe by 2050, vs 98 GWe previously).

Northland makes two further points we agree with:

• The forecast is bottom-up and not reverse-engineered from a net-zero scenario, “which we think make these projections more credible/realistic.” In other words, nobody started with 1.5°C and worked backward.
• The driver has changed from climate to energy security. “While its zero carbon attributes are compelling, we think the energy security investment case is stronger and more resilient than climate-based investment, which can ebb and flow with political regimes.” We’ve been saying the same for years, and it’s hard to argue with after watching Germany’s economy minister call for a “nuclear rethink” as energy prices surged in April. Better late than never.

Then there are SMRs. Last year the IAEA saw small modular reactors taking 5%-24% of new capacity by 2050, a range so wide it was nearly meaningless, with the low end at a “paltry” 16 GWe. This year the band is 23%-28%, or about 120-285 GWe. In North America, ~60% of new nuclear capacity is expected to come from SMRs. Readers will know that we’ve long argued modular, behind-the-meter reactors are the only real long-term answer to the AI power problem, so it’s nice to see the IAEA catching up (for much more, see “Bring Your Own Power Plant: Behind-The-Meter To Power 25% Of All Data Centers By 2030“).

CIBC’s Krista Friesen, in her Weekly Blueprint, adds a point that gets far less attention: the existing fleet is old. Two-thirds of operating reactors are more than 30 years old, and 46% are over 40. Even in the high case, about one-third of today’s capacity retires by 2060. The industry therefore has to keep building just to stand still, and in 2025 it didn’t quite manage that. Seven reactors (2.8 GW) were retired and only three (3.0 GW) were connected. Nuclear generation grew 1.1%, overall electricity generation grew 2.7%, while nuclear’s share of global power fell to 8.4% from 8.7%.

The $6 trillion question

Day 1 of the symposium was a Finance Summit, and the headline number was large. Meeting the “Tripling Declaration” would require about $6 trillion over 25 years, with annual nuclear capex rising from about $80BN today to more than $250BN a year through 2050. (For reference, current aggregate national targets put global capacity at 1,457 GWe by 2050, which is almost a quadrupling.)

The notable change is that, as one Westinghouse/EDF/Orano/GE Vernova panel put it (per BofA), “A few years ago the question was whether there was sufficient investment money to do this. Now there is.” CIBC reports that discussions are “now focused less on whether institutions will invest and more on when.” The WNA also launched a World Nuclear Investment Guide to help turn a “specialized energy investment” into a mainstream infrastructure asset class. The goal is to take design, licensing, regulatory and supply-chain risk out of projects and leave only execution risk, which, based on history, is plenty.

The most useful comments came from the customers. On BofA’s “Beyond offtake” panel, ExxonMobil said plainly that “the nuclear industry doesn’t have a technology problem, it has a DEPLOYMENT problem”, and argued that the risk model is wrong. In LNG or CCGT projects, nobody expects the technology vendor to carry most of the risk. The owner-operator does. Exxon is preparing a report proposing a new delivery model.

Amazon, which is putting “real money on the table” behind X-energy, made a point that should be pinned above every regulator’s desk:

“No point for a PPA if the connections take 7 years.”

That’s the grid interconnection queue in one sentence, and it’s why we’ve been pushing “behind the meter” on-site generation for data centers (going so far as to tweet in December: “Make ‘behind the meter’ mandatory”). Demand isn’t the issue either: CIBC notes Microsoft plans to more than triple its data center capacity to over 38 GW by 2032 from about 12 GW, excluding rented neocloud capacity. Those gigawatts have to come from somewhere.

Meanwhile, China just builds them

While the West waits to see who goes first, China explained how it does things. Ma Yuanhua of State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. said China had 62 reactors operating (66 GW) and 58 under construction (69 GW) as of July, with targets of 110 GW by 2030 and 150 GW by 2035. The method is dull and it works: standardization, specialization, centralization. Targets include 80% design reuse, a 56-month construction schedule, 93%+ factory acceptance rates, and centralized procurement. (By comparison, some Western projects have spent longer than 56 months on permitting.)

Of course, it depends who is counting. SNPTC’s 58 includes projects China considers underway. The WNA only counts reactors once the first concrete has been poured, and by that stricter definition, per Goldman’s monthly tracker, China had 37 reactors under construction as of Aug 11, more than twice India (8) and Russia (7) combined, and nearly as many as the other 16 countries on the list put together (42). The U.S. doesn’t appear on the chart at all, which is the more telling number. As we summarized it on Aug 13: “China 37 nuclear reactors under construction; US 0.”

This is where “everyone racing for bronze” leads: the U.S. hasn’t even qualified for the race yet, while China is already building its next reactors.

The Western lesson was said out loud. Constellation: “The West should apply the China model.” Speakers backed a “license once, review once, build many” framework, and there’s real movement. Finland’s regulatory overhaul cuts binding requirements from about 8,000 to 1,500, the U.S. NRC is changing its culture under the ADVANCE Act, and Europe’s ENGARD initiative aims to harmonize design reviews across countries.

Other highlights from around the world:

• Japan is back. TEPCO restarted Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6 on Feb 9 after 14 years offline. Kansai Electric says 15 reactors have now restarted since Fukushima, and Japan’s policy has moved from “reducing” to “maximizing” nuclear, with a 20% share targeted by 2040 and 11-14 new large reactors by the 2050s. We asked back in May whether new Japanese build was inevitable. The answer appears to be yes.

How it’s done:

This is TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Niigata. The seven-unit site has 8.2GW of capacity, making it the world’s largest power plant. Unit 6 entered commercial operation on 16 April 2026, returning a 1.36GW Advanced Boiling Water Reactor to… pic.twitter.com/N2HrvHfFhA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 30, 2026

• Poland has secured €17BN for its first plant, with three AP1000s in preparation.
• Czech Republic is moving to 80-year operations and building new units plus a Rolls-Royce SMR.
• USA: Following the May 2025 Executive Order calling for 10 large reactors under construction by 2030, DOE’s $17.5BN long-lead procurement program has letters of intent with seven unnamed counterparties. Some attendees are optimistic about 1-2 site announcements before the midterms. TerraPower has its construction permit and an active job site in Wyoming.
• Africa: Togo’s president signed on to the tripling pledge and will host the NEISA summit in 2027, noting that Africa wants “partnerships and investment rather than technology handouts.”
• Ships: HD Korea Shipbuilding presented on nuclear-powered commercial vessels, a timely follow-on to Washington laying the groundwork for offshore nuclear in July. Its risk disclosure was admirably honest: “It might not work.”

The real bottleneck: you can’t 3D-print a uranium deposit

This is where the symposium got most interesting for markets. Reactors can be standardized, financed and eventually built. The fuel to run them is a different problem. Here is what CCJ’s Gitzel said, via BofA:

Uranium mining is the bottleneck, as deposits are non-reproducible and lead times from discovery to production range up to 20 years; while fuel conversion, enrichment and fabrication can be more easily addressed with capital alone.

Kazatomprom’s Dastan Kosherbayev put it more bluntly: after years of underinvestment, producers will prioritize customers who give clear, long-term demand signals. Kazatomprom will “no longer turn down attractive eastern deals in anticipation of potential western demand.” Put simply, Western utilities that have been waiting for spot dips may find the East has bought the inventory. This comes as Russia banned sulphuric acid exports through year-end, threatening about 3MM lbs of Kazakh 2027 output, while Kazatomprom agreed to sell uranium to Rosatom’s Uranium One. Coincidences happen.

Northland ran the numbers, and they are large:

• Uranium: At 0.4-0.5MM lbs per GWe per year, the IAEA’s 641-1,045 GWe range implies 288-470MM lbs of annual demand by 2050, versus about 168MM lbs today, and that’s before replacing depleted mines.
• Enrichment: Excluding Russian and Chinese SWU, Western demand is about 28.5MM SWU against about 24.8MM SWU of supply (per Urenco). The West is already in deficit. In the IAEA high case, demand rises to about 57MM SWU, a ~32MM SWU shortfall, or up to 69MM if SMRs running on HALEU take 30%-50% share.

Urenco confirmed this from the supply side: its order book has grown from €8.7BN in 2021 to €21.3BN, and it is adding 4.6MM SWU, almost a third more capacity, “based on a market assessment, not orders.” Separately, Constellation said LEU+ (fuel enriched up to 10%) will allow 24-month reload cycles across its fleet, and Silex/GLE expects its laser enrichment license near Paducah by 2027. As we noted when DOE put $2.7BN behind domestic enrichment in January, the fuel chain is where the money is going.

Prices are responding. BofA’s charts:

On uranium, the long-term contract price hit an all-time high of $96.50/lb (even if nuclear stocks have not noticed), above the prior 2007 peak of $95.00, as we noted in “Uranium Needs To Go Higher” earlier this month. BofA reaffirmed its forecasts: $104.20/lb for 2026 and $129.80/lb for 2027, which would be a new record, before easing to a long-term $84.75.

Spot has also been trading below term, as the chart above shows. BofA says the important change is who is buying. Producers’ share of term selling fell from 92% in 2023 to 76% in 2025, and “rising utility participation in the term market is a driver of higher U3O8 prices, as churn… is replaced by end-user consumptive demand.” In other words, less trading between hedge funds and more buying by utilities that actually need the fuel.

For those who think the move is over, here’s the 38-year chart. Uranium remains well below its 2007 nominal peak, even though the demand story is now much broader.

None of this is new to regular readers. Goldman flagged a cumulative 2.3 billion lb uranium supply deficit through 2045 in May when it added SMRs to its models, and we argued in August that the market is still underpricing the nuclear build cycle.

How to trade it: picks and shovels over reactor dreams

The sell side mostly agrees on direction, but not on where to position along the value chain:

• BofA (Lawson Winder) “remains constructive” and names buy-rated U.S.-listed exposure: CEG, TLN, VST in power; CCJ and OKLO among vendors; and CCJ and STDN in the fuel cycle.
• Northland (Jeff Grampp) is also long-term bullish but more careful on timing. He cut price targets on reactor developers (IMSR to $8 from $15, SMR to $10 from $16, NNE to $22 from $37) to reflect higher costs of capital (i.e., more dilution) and a slower 2030-2035 buildout. He instead favors fuel and supply-chain names that make money now: BWXT, LEU, EU, URG, MIR. Asked to choose between enrichment and uranium, Northland picks uranium.

That seems like the right reading of the symposium. The long-term story is intact and improving, with the IAEA raising forecasts again, hyperscalers writing checks and Japan back in the game. The near-term constraints are physical: fuel, forgings, workers and grid connections. Reactor developers have to wait for the first Western mover to deliver on time and on budget. Uranium miners and enrichers don’t. Both need the same uranium.

As Kansai Electric’s delegate said, the industry’s next phase is about “disciplined vision,” and increasingly about meeting in person, “becoming more analog in an increasingly digital world.” That’s also a fair description of uranium: a physical asset that can’t be replicated, needed to power data centers, and in short supply.

More in the full notes: BofA Global Research, “Postcard from the 2026 WNA Symposium” (Sept 15); CIBC Capital Markets, “2026 World Nuclear Symposium” (Sept 15) and “IAEA Raises Nuclear Outlook For Sixth Consecutive Year – The Weekly Blueprint” (Sept 14); Northland Capital Markets, “Takeaways From Updated IAEA Nuclear Forecast” (Sept 17), all available to pro subs.

Authored by Julia R. Cartwright via The Daily Economy,

Imagine it’s January in New York and you’re sharing a tiny apartment with two roommates. The walls are crumbling around you, and there’s a hole in your bedroom wall big enough to see outside. Every time it rains or snows, water drips into your room. You call your landlord to fix it over and over again, but nothing happens.

This is reality for many New Yorkers. This degradation is the predictable result of decades of housing policy that has kept supply scarce and left rent-regulated buildings to decay. Many people blame it on big-city life, but lessons from Tokyo show us that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Tokyo Metropolis is home to about 14.27 million people, far more than New York City’s roughly 8.5 million. Yet renting in a city not quite twice the size costs a fraction of what it does in the biggest city in the US.

In the mid-1990s, a one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo cost about the same as one in New York, a little less than $1,000 a month. By 2025, a New York one-bedroom averaged about $4,400 per month, while a Tokyo one-bedroom ran about $1,270. A weaker yen explains part of that gap, but even in yen, Tokyo rents barely moved in 30 years while New York’s rents nearly tripled.

Housing prices ultimately come down to supply and demand. So how has Tokyo managed to keep housing relatively affordable, while New York has struggled to do the same?

Tokyo has been focused on keeping up with demand; its housing stock nearly tripled between 1963 and 2013, reaching 7.36 million homes. To do this, Japan keeps zoning flexible. Instead of limiting each area to a single use, zoning allows homes, shops, and light industry to coexist on the same blocks. Projects that follow these rules can be built “as-of-right,” without discretionary review or giving neighbors the power to block them.

Japan’s zoning rules are uniform across the country. The national government defines 13 standard zones instead of leaving land use to individual neighborhoods. That top-down approach cuts both ways, however, since a national system could tighten rules as easily as loosen them, but Japan’s has repeatedly loosened them to allow more housing.

New York City’s zoning works in nearly the opposite way. A site-specific rezoning goes through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, a review so onerous that about 40 percent of private rezoning proposals fail to get approved. About 27 percent of Manhattan’s lots are under restrictive landmark regulations, and historic districts see new buildings at about one-sixth the rate of other lots.

Then there are the empty NYC apartments. The 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act capped rent increases on vacant rent-stabilized units and limited how much renovation cost landlords can recover. When a $700-a-month unit needs $100,000 of work to meet code, many owners leave it empty; this helps explain why nearly 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments were empty in 2025.

Continuing their stance of flexibility, Tokyo has allowed smaller apartments to be built. A typical one-bedroom is about 430 square feet, compared with 590 for a New York one-bedroom. Smaller apartments lower the barrier to entry for single renters and young professionals to get their own place.

New York spent decades making small units hard to build through a 400-square-foot minimum rule dating to 1987 and zoning rules called the “Dwelling Unit Factor” that forced large average unit sizes. The “City of Yes” amendment only eased those rules in December 2024, after decades of limiting the kinds of smaller, cheaper apartments Tokyo builds routinely.

Buildings in Japan also turn over faster. Japan’s tax code depreciates a wooden house over 22 years, and the average Japanese home is demolished at about 32 years old, versus roughly 70 in the US. Old stock gets replaced with newer, denser buildings instead of being preserved indefinitely.

Japan’s inclusive regulations result in much more building. Tokyo averaged about 155,000 housing starts a year from 1995 to 2015 and still starts roughly 130,000 annually; New York, by contrast, added roughly 50,000 in 2025. Since the 1960s, Tokyo’s stock has nearly tripled while New York’s has grown only 20 to 30 percent.

Factory-built homes also help ease supply constraints. One Japanese Sekisui House plant produces about 20 houses a day, and roughly 13 percent of new Japanese homes are prefab or modular. New York has only recently started experimenting with modular construction, and it remains a small share of the city’s building, far behind Japan.

To be fair, Tokyo isn’t cheap by Japanese standards, but it has accommodated millions without New York-style crumbling buildings and vacant units. New York is moving the other way: Mamdani’s Rent Guidelines Board froze rents for roughly one million stabilized apartments. The freeze helps current tenants but creates no new homes, and analysts expect more units to sit empty as prices for non-stabilized apartments keep rising.

The renter watching snow blow through the hole in her bedroom wall won’t be saved by another year of frozen rent. Instead of doubling down on the policies that brought scarcity, dilapidated apartments, and sky-high rents, New York could take a lesson from Tokyo, where the way to make housing affordable has been to make a lot more of it.

Julia R. Cartwright is an economist whose work specializes in law and economics, political economy, and economic development. Her research features topics like the governance structures of crypto markets, the economic consequences of judicial interventions in courts in East Africa, and the development impact of housing regulations.

This month has made it very clear how AI doom narratives are promoted in an information operation through public relations firms, billionaires, and endless streams of climate-like doom corporate media headlines. These efforts aim to shape public opinion about AI and push for tighter regulation, giving those at the top of frontier labs moats. 

The headlines have ranged from claims that AI will take tens of millions of jobs to, more recently, Bill Gates warning that AI could “cause a billion deaths” as he calls for regulation. But like Gates’ climate predictions, much of the doomerism seems to be hyped up. 

As for the AI jobs-apocalypse narrative, it may be overblown. A new report by McKinsey & Co. suggests AI could force roughly 11 million US workers to change occupations by 2035 – or about 7% of the current workforce.

McKinsey describes the labor market disruption as more of a transitional period for working-class folks in low-skilled jobs rather than an outright jobs apocalypse. However, six out of seven affected workers could face income loss.

“Job opportunities can be abundant and yet leave millions of workers without work if those positions require different skills, credentials, locations or pay structures than current jobs,” the report’s authors stated.

The US economy has navigated technological changes before, and there is nothing new under the sun: from tractors displacing farm workers in the fields to automated factories replacing workers on an assembly line, computerized offices, and online retail. Those transitions lifted productivity but disrupted the labor market, requiring workers to retrain and find new jobs.

Over time, living standards rise, and the economy adapts. But apocalyptic narratives of tens of millions of job losses and warnings like Gates’ claim that AI could “cause a billion deaths” represent perhaps what can only be described as peak doomerism.

Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness,

Chinese-linked hackers have allegedly been impersonating American artificial intelligence experts, including a former White House official, in a targeted cyberespionage campaign aimed at obtaining sensitive information about U.S. AI policymaking.

Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint revealed Thursday that a hacking group it identifies as TA419 has been attempting to steal passwords from individuals at American and Japanese think tanks, defense contractors, universities and law firms since at least 2025.

Proofpoint attributed the activity to Chinese hackers based on the malware, infrastructure and targeting patterns associated with the attacks, which the company said align with Beijing’s intelligence priorities.

The latest operation involved fraudulent emails appearing to originate from prominent AI and national security experts, including Lynne Parker, former principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The messages typically invited recipients to participate in AI-related projects or collaborations before directing them to fraudulent websites designed to steal login credentials.

Among those targeted was Alex Engler, a former White House official who now leads the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy.

Engler told Reuters he received an email supposedly from Parker inviting him to participate in a new AI policy initiative. After noticing something suspicious and consulting colleagues, he discovered the message was fraudulent.

Proofpoint said the operation targeted fewer than 10 individuals across several organizations, particularly experts involved in AI regulation, export controls and national AI strategy.

The company’s findings suggest the hackers were pursuing intelligence about Washington’s policymaking rather than simply attempting to steal American technology.

Parker confirmed that at least two individuals received suspicious messages using her identity in early July.

“The United States and China are in a competition around AI,” Parker told Reuters.

The allegations underscore growing cybersecurity concerns surrounding America’s technological competition with China, particularly as AI becomes increasingly important to national security and economic policy.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Beijing has consistently denied conducting cyberespionage operations.

Democrats entered this year’s midterms aiming to flip Senate seats in Maine, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio, and hold Georgia and Michigan.

With the national mood really riding against the GOP, they see opportunities in Texas and Iowa as well. But things appear to be changing. That Democrats plan to flip the Senate assumed they wouldn’t lose any seats they currently hold. Michigan is potentially winnable for the GOP after Democrats in the state nominated Abdul El-Sayed, but now another reliably blue state has landed on the defensive side of the ledger, forcing Democrats to defend a seat in a blue state they have held for nearly two decades.

Republican Michele Tafoya trails Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan by less than 2 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race, a gap that sits inside the margin of error. If the environment were as poisonous for Republicans as it is believed to be, this election wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar. Instead, it has become a true contest, and that raises a question the party would rather avoid: how many of its offensive gains survive if one of its safest seats slips away in November?

The competitive nature of this election is most certainly due in part to unique circumstances in the state. A KSTP poll taken last month found that 14% of Minnesota voters named fraud as their most important issue, behind inflation and cost of living at 37% and ahead of health care at 12%.

Federal prosecutors estimate that at least $9 billion billed to 14 state-run Medicaid programs since 2018 may be fraudulent, a figure Walz disputes, on top of separate schemes in which sham nonprofits billed the state for child care, school lunches and other services. According to a House Oversight report, the state’s Democratic leaders knew about the fraud and failed to act.

Most of those charged are of Somali descent, and the House report found state officials ignored the fraud to avoid accusations of racism. Gov. Tim Walz’s net approval has since collapsed from +19 in June 2025 to -14 in August 2026. The damage has spread to Attorney General Keith Ellison, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and the Democratic legislature. Pollsters have yet to publish separate numbers for Flanagan, though a politician who has stood one step behind Walz since 2019 has little room to distance herself from the scandal. Tafoya has built her campaign on that exact point.

NEW 📺 AD: We teach our kids that bad behavior has consequences, but somehow politicians think the same rules don’t apply to them.

Peggy Flanagan ignored warning signs while fraudsters stole our tax dollars.

She has spent eight years as lieutenant governor in the Walz… pic.twitter.com/utZpS40XRe

— Michele Tafoya (@Michele_Tafoya) September 18, 2026

The fraud issue is moving more than one race. Klobuchar entered the governor’s contest in late January with a double-digit lead. The most recent co/efficient survey has her up by 2.

MPR News described the Senate contest as quiet, since the outside money pouring into Texas and Maine has yet to show up in Minnesota. That quiet works in Tafoya’s favor. She is running a state-level argument about state-level failure, and national Democrats have given her the space to make it without interference.

If control of the Senate comes down to a single seat in November, Democrats may discover that the race they never thought they would have to defend was the one that mattered, and that their handling of one of the largest benefits scandals in American history might save the GOP from losing the Senate.