Nuclear Truth vs. IEA’s Cowardice: How an Energy Watchdog Learned to Dismiss the Atom

Introduction: A Crisis of Courage in the Global Energy Outlook

 The world is in a race against climate breakdown, yet the International Energy Agency (IEA) – the very body tasked with guiding global energy policy – has consistently underplayed the one technology capable of decisively ending our fossil fuel addiction: nuclear power. This underestimation and symbolic discard of nuclear energy by the IEA is not a trivial oversight; it is a symptom of deeper institutional failures. At a time when climate science demands radical cuts in carbon emissions, the IEA’s timid stance on nuclear betrays fossil-fueled complicity and institutional cowardice. Rather than championing all viable solutions, the Agency clings to a renewables-only rhetoric that ultimately reinforces dependence on coal, oil, and gas. The result is a half-measure energy roadmap – one that soothes popular anxieties and political sensitivities, but falls woefully short of what nuclear realism tells us is necessary to actually secure a livable futureearthriseaccord.org. This post critically examines the IEA’s history and ongoing marginalization of nuclear energy, framing it as a case study in discarded futures and compromised leadership. In doing so, we draw on Earthrise Accord’s core themes – from affective contagion (the spread of cultural fear) to clean energy reparations (accountability for those who delayed our transition) – to argue that the IEA must finally find the courage to tell the truth about the atom.

A nuclear power plant at sunset (Cattenom, France). In the 1970s oil crisis, countries like France turned to nuclear energy for energy security, but today institutions like the IEA often leave nuclear in the dusk of their scenarios.

From the 1973 Oil Shock to Net-Zero Promises: IEA’s Path of Least Resistance

It is ironic that nuclear power’s exile from the IEA’s favor comes despite the Agency’s origin story. The IEA was born in the wake of the 1973–74 oil shock, when OPEC’s embargo sent the West scrambling for energy alternativesiea.org. Established in 1974 under the OECD, the IEA’s initial mission was to secure oil supplies for its member countriesiea.org. Yet from the start, the Agency also recognized that true energy security lay in reducing dependence on oil – and that meant aggressive moves on energy efficiency and nuclear power. Indeed, the IEA’s own World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2023 reflects that the first oil crisis “was a major catalyst for change, driving a huge push to scale up energy efficiency and nuclear power” in the 1970sneimagazine.com. Countries like France took this to heart: the French government’s Messmer Plan, launched in response to the embargo, rapidly built dozens of reactors and achieved energy independence, preventing an estimated 2 billion tons of CO₂ emissions since 1970earthriseaccord.org. Nuclear energy was seen not as a luxury, but as a strategic necessity to escape the stranglehold of fossil fuels.

Fast-forward to today, and the IEA celebrates a very different set of “solutions.” In the Foreword to WEO 2023, Executive Director Fatih Birol emphasizes that now we have wind, solar, electric cars, and other technologies “readily available” as the “lasting solutions to today’s energy dilemmas” – implicitly framing nuclear as a relic of the pastneimagazine.com. The IEA’s press materials for its landmark Net Zero by 2050 roadmap similarly focused on headlines like “tripling renewable capacity by 2030” and “doubling energy efficiency”, while omitting any mention of nuclear powerneimagazine.com. Tellingly, the WEO 2023 press release did not mention nuclear at all, and within the full 353-page report, “nuclear” appears mostly in passing – 114 mentions compared to 408 for “solar,” 233 for “wind,” and a whopping 792 for “gas”neimagazine.com. The contrast speaks volumes. An agency created in an era defined by oil scarcity and rescued in part by nuclear reactors has now largely sidelined the atom in its vision of the future.

Why this turnaround? Part of the answer lies in institutional inertia and path-dependence. The IEA, as a consortium of industrialized nations, evolved its mandate over decades – from oil security in the 1970s to broader energy and climate analysis todayiea.orgiea.org. But its analytical frameworks and political sensitivities have been slow to adapt. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, nuclear energy fell out of favor globally due to high-profile accidents (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and waning public support, while renewable technologies gained political momentum. The IEA absorbed these trends into its modeling: each annual Outlook made only modest nuclear assumptions, projecting forward the stagnation of the status quo. In bureaucracies, yesterday’s cautious assumptions often ossify into today’s reference scenarios – a classic case of path dependency. Even as climate urgency mounted, the IEA’s baseline scenarios assumed little growth in nuclear, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of low ambition. The latest WEO is emblematic: in the Stated Policies Scenario (which reflects current pledges), global nuclear capacity creeps from ~417 GW in 2022 to just ~620 GW by 2050neimagazine.com. Even in the best-case Net Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, which models what’s needed to limit warming, nuclear reaches only “well over 900 GW” by mid-centuryneimagazine.com – roughly a doubling of today’s fleet. By comparison, solar and wind are envisioned to skyrocket by many multiples. The minimal nuclear growth in IEA scenarios suggests that the Agency cannot shake its ingrained view of nuclear as a minor contributor. As one industry observer put it, “the overall impression is that nuclear is at best an afterthought, which receives only grudging attention” in the WEOneimagazine.com. The IEA appears stuck in yesterday’s mindset, projecting incremental change when the climate crisis demands exponential action.

Symbolic Discard of the Atom: Nuclear Stigma and the Comfort of Dogma

Underneath the IEA’s modeling choices lies a powerful subtext: nuclear power has become a political and symbolic scapegoat. Decades of public fear and organized anti-nuclear activism have imbued the very word “nuclear” with dread. This cultural radiophobia exerts a quiet influence even on technocratic institutions. It’s far easier for the IEA to rally support around sun and wind – technologies with a “green” image – than to court controversy by championing the much-maligned atom. In effect, nuclear energy has been symbolically discarded in order to present an idealized narrative of a future cleansed of any technology that evokes anxiety. The problem is that this narrative is a comforting fantasy. Stripping away nuclear may make the energy transition story more palatable to some, but it doesn’t make it more real.

Psychologically, what we see here is a form of displacement and denial playing out on a global policy stage. As environmental journalist Marco Visscher and others have observed, public opposition to nuclear often persists “in spite of the empirical facts,” driven by emotional and symbolic factors rather than rational risk analysisearthriseaccord.org. Fears of radiation and reactor accidents have taken on an almost mythic dimension – nuclear power symbolizes more than itself. In the psychoanalytic sense, society has used the nuclear issue as a repository for deeper insecurities: fear of apocalyptic destruction (projected from nuclear weapons to nuclear plants), distrust of governmental and scientific elites, even guilt about humanity’s technological tampering with natureearthriseaccord.org. These unsymbolized anxieties are powerful, precisely because they operate beneath the level of conscious thought. They spread through affective contagion, a kind of emotional virus that “transmits from person to person, almost like a virus of emotion,” catching hold of communities and institutions alikeearthriseaccord.org. The result is a broad cultural phobia that is unmoored from actual data – a fact-free dread that lingers even as study after study shows nuclear to be among the safest and cleanest energy sources per unit of electricity generated.

This irrational dread has not spared the IEA. Although the Agency would never admit to being swayed by public emotion, its actions suggest an implicit deference to the anti-nuclear zeitgeist. The symbolic discard of nuclear is evident in the IEA’s language and emphasis. For example, when launching a report on nuclear’s role, Director Birol felt compelled to add a disclaimer that “some countries, including some IEA Members, do not see a role for nuclear… and the IEA Secretariat fully respects their position. This report should not be seen as representative of their views.”neimagazine.com. Such a statement is remarkable: the IEA essentially apologized for even discussing nuclear, reassuring its audience that pro-nuclear analysis wouldn’t upset members who are ideologically opposed. This is appeasement, not leadership. It reflects an institutional fear of challenging entrenched beliefs – a fear so strong that the Agency effectively self-censors its advocacy for nuclear solutions. By sanitizing its vision to exclude the “controversial” atom, the IEA upholds a symbolic order in which “clean energy” is equated only with renewables, and nuclear’s unique contributions are swept under the rug. The tragedy is that this kowtowing to popular fear trades truth for comfort. Rather than dispel myths, the IEA is reinforcing them by omission. It’s a feedback loop of timid messaging: public fear leads to cautious policy positions, which in turn validate the notion that nuclear must be something to fear or avoid.

Breaking this cycle requires what Earthrise Accord calls nuclear realism – an unflinching willingness to align our energy policy with physics and facts instead of cultural myth. Nuclear realism insists that the immense energy density of the atom, its proven ability to deliver reliable power at scale, and its unmatched safety record (when compared objectively to fossil fuels) must be acknowledged openlyearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org. Anything less is self-deception. Unfortunately, the IEA’s current stance is far from realist; it is performative. By symbolically discarding nuclear, the Agency performs solidarity with a particular vision of “green” progress, one that soothes anxiety by banishing the spectral threat of radiation. Yet this performance comes at the cost of discarding our best chance at a truly sustainable future. The futures we are forsaking – discarded futures of abundant clean energy – are ones where nuclear and renewable technologies work in tandem to eliminate fossil fuels entirely. We know this future is possible; France demonstrated a version of it decades ago, and other countries could have followedearthriseaccord.org. That future was abandoned due to fear, disinformation, and lack of imagination. The IEA, rather than working to reclaim it, appears resigned to keeping it on the shelf.

Renewables-Only Delusions: When Excluding Nuclear Means Endorsing Fossil Fuels

Behind the IEA’s sunny projections of a wind-and-solar utopia lurks a dark and often unspoken corollary: intermittent renewables always require fossil-fuel backup. This is the inconvenient truth that the “100% renewables” rhetoric tries to paper over. Solar and wind, for all their merits, are variable resources – the sun sets, the wind calms – and today’s battery storage technologies cannot cost-effectively carry a grid through long doldrums or seasonal lulls. What fills the gap when the renewables dip? In practice, it is almost always coal, oil, or (most often) natural gas. Thus, an energy strategy that pointedly excludes nuclear power is, by omission, a strategy that leans on fossil fuels to guarantee reliabilityearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org. As Earthrise Accord has bluntly put it, “the absence of nuclear ensures [fossil] reliance remains permanent.”earthriseaccord.org This dynamic turns the “clean” narrative into a Trojan horse – a gift to the fossil fuel industry delivered in the wrapping of green idealismearthriseaccord.org.

The IEA’s entrenchment in renewables-only rhetoric makes it complicit in this outcome. By consistently underestimating nuclear and overestimating how easily renewables can shoulder the entire load, the Agency’s scenarios tacitly build in a fossil fuel crutch. For example, even as the IEA heralds peaks in oil, gas, and coal demand this decade under current policies, it still projects that in 2030 the world will derive ~73% of its energy from fossil fuels (down only modestly from ~80% today)neimagazine.comneimagazine.com. How can fossil fuels remain so dominant even as renewables surge? The answer is that renewables are largely addition rather than replacement unless paired with firm generation like nuclear. They generate lots of electricity when conditions are favorable, but when night falls or the wind stalls, grids without nuclear must fall back on the old standbys. We have already seen this play out in real time: when nuclear plants shut down, fossil fuels rush in to fill the void.

Consider a few instructive cases. In California, the 2012 closure of the San Onofre nuclear station – celebrated by some as a “renewables victory” – led directly to a surge in gas-fired generation to compensate, boosting carbon emissions by an estimated 9 million tons per year and worsening air qualityearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org. In New York, the premature shutdown of Indian Point in 2021 likewise caused the state’s progress on emissions to backslide as gas plants ramped upearthriseaccord.org. Perhaps most starkly, Germany’s vaunted Energiewende (energy transition), which prioritized closing nuclear plants before coal plants, resulted in higher coal burn and increased dependence on Russian gas – a policy fiasco that not only raised emissions but also undermined geopolitical securityearthriseaccord.org. Each of these cases underscores the same lesson: if you remove nuclear from the equation, you empower fossil fuels. Every gigawatt of nuclear capacity retired or not built is effectively replaced by a gigawatt of fossil capacity that keeps its foot in the door of our energy system.

This is why the IEA’s failure to robustly advocate for nuclear is more than a quirk – it is a dangerous bias that aligns with fossil interests. Oil and gas companies have long understood this dynamic. In fact, many fossil fuel lobbyists openly support the 100% renewables narrative, aware that it “sounds progressive” yet will “always leave a gap… filled by natural gas.”earthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org It is a shrewd form of controlled opposition: by funding anti-nuclear environmental groups and greenwashing themselves as renewable-friendly, fossil corporations ensure they remain indispensableearthriseaccord.org. The Sierra Club’s infamous acceptance of $26 million from natural gas interests in the 2000s – followed by its hardened stance against nuclear and promotion of gas as a “bridge fuel” – is a case in pointearthriseaccord.org. The cult of renewables-only has been, in no small part, fossil-fueled.

One would hope that the world’s “leading energy authority” would be the first to expose this sham. And yet, the IEA has largely gone along with it, at least tacitly. Every time the Agency releases a major report extolling record renewable growth without equally emphasizing the necessity of firm, carbon-free backup, it contributes to a false sense of security. By downplaying nuclear, the IEA effectively normalizes the continued reliance on natural gas that sneaks in through the back door of a renewables-heavy gridearthriseaccord.org. In doing so, the Agency is complicit with the fossil status quo, however unwittingly. This complicity is not outright climate denial, nor is it as brazen as lobbying for coal – it is more subtle. It wears the guise of optimism and technological progress, which makes it all the more insidious. After all, who could object to an upbeat message that solar panels and wind turbines will save us? The objection must be this: when such optimism is selective (ignoring nuclear) and not grounded in a realistic plan to fully eliminate carbon, it becomes a dangerous form of denial. It denies the severity of the challenge – that after decades of delay we have run out of time for half-measures. It denies the evidence that nuclear and renewables together stand a far better chance of displacing fossil fuels completely than either alone. And ultimately, it denies justice to the most vulnerable: the communities around the world who continue to suffer the health and climate harms of ongoing fossil fuel burning that a more aggressive nuclear build-out could have preventedearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org.

Institutional Cowardice: When an Energy Watchdog Fears Its Own Shadow

Why has the IEA not corrected course? The blunt answer is institutional cowardice. The Agency’s leadership and member states have, time and again, shrunk from the hard conversations and bold stances that a truly honest confrontation with climate change would demand. It is no secret that within the IEA’s 31 member countries (historically all OECD nations), there is a diversity of views on nuclear energy. Some, like France and the UK, support expanding it; others, like Germany or Austria, are fiercely opposed. Rather than lead a science-based consensus, the IEA often takes the path of least resistance: don’t rock the boat. This manifests as hedged language, lukewarm endorsements, and deference to the lowest common denominator among its members. Birol’s public assurance that the IEA “respects” members who refuse nuclear – to the point of not wanting a pro-nuclear report to speak for themneimagazine.com – is a stark illustration of this deference. Imagine if the IPCC said it respects countries that “don’t see a role for emissions cuts in their future” and therefore wouldn’t offend them with strong calls to decarbonize – it would be absurd. Yet substituting nuclear power into that sentence describes the IEA’s posture.

This timidity is rooted in political fear. The IEA dreads jeopardizing its relationships with powerful member governments or being accused of overstepping its mandate. Historically, it was an oil security club; now it carefully balances on a fence between its traditional fossil-focused constituency and the pressures of the climate era. The result is a schizophrenic identity: the IEA publishes scenarios aligned with Paris Agreement goals, yet also assures oil producers it’s not turning into a radical climate NGOenergypolicy.columbia.eduenergypolicy.columbia.edu. It tries to please everyone – and in doing so, it risks pleasing no one, at least not fully. Climate advocates criticize the IEA for still being too conservative in phasing out fossil fuels, while fossil-aligned voices (like some U.S. legislators and Wall Street Journal op-eds) now lambaste the IEA for “straying outside its mandate” by pushing any clean energy agenda at allenergypolicy.columbia.eduenergypolicy.columbia.edu. Caught in this crossfire, the IEA’s instinct is to play it safe, clinging to ambiguous middle-ground positions. And in that calculus, nuclear becomes an easy sacrifice: it’s the thorny option that upsets one side deeply, whereas not mentioning it much only mildly bothers the other side. So the politically “savvy” move is to soft-pedal nuclear – to neither condemn it outright (which would anger pro-nuclear countries and reveal bias) nor actively champion it (which would incur the wrath of anti-nuclear lobbies and certain governments). The IEA’s treatment of nuclear thus exemplifies the cowardice of consensus: going along with a comforting group delusion (that we can do it all with renewables) rather than speaking unpopular truths.

Such cowardice has dire consequences. The IEA’s hesitant voice on nuclear contributes to policy inertia in the real world. Many national energy planners and finance institutions take their cue from IEA scenarios and signals. If the IEA projected a dramatically larger role for nuclear in achieving net-zero – commensurate with what many independent analyses say is necessary – it could empower bolder decision-making on reactor investments, regulatory reform, and R&D funding. Instead, the IEA’s lukewarm modeling sends the message that only modest nuclear growth is expected or needed, which in turn dampens urgency. It becomes a self-reinforcing loop: low expectations lead to low emphasis, leading to low investment and deployment, which then confirm the original low expectations. Breaking out of this loop requires visionary leadership, the kind the IEA has not shown to date on this issue.

One might argue that the IEA is just being pragmatic – that given political realities, pushing nuclear too hard would cause backlash. But if an organization at the heart of global energy governance cannot challenge political comfort zones in the face of planetary emergency, what is its purpose? The climate crisis demands courage and clarity. History is littered with examples of institutions that justified passivity by pointing to political constraints, only to be judged harshly in hindsight for lacking spine. Future generations facing climate chaos may well ask why, when humanity still had time to act, its premier energy advisory body pulled its punches on fully eliminating fossil fuels. They will see an IEA that spoke about clean energy in halves – embracing renewables but estranging nuclear – and they will recognize this half-measure for what it was: a moral failure of the international community to unite behind a truly comprehensive solution.

Reclaiming the Future: Toward Nuclear Realism and Clean Energy Justice

We stand at a crossroads. Down one path is the continuation of the IEA’s current trajectory: polite incrementalism, symbolic gestures, and scenarios that “keep the atoms in the attic,” thereby prolonging the life of fossil fuels. Down the other path is a course correction – a bold integration of nuclear realism into global energy planning, paired with an unwavering commitment to phase out fossil fuels entirely. To choose the second path, institutions like the IEA must undergo a kind of institutional therapy: they must confront the fears and biases that have kept them from fully endorsing nuclear, and they must update their vision to match the exigencies of our time.

The ingredients of a saner energy future are not a mystery. Scholars, engineers, and even the IPCC have made it clear that an optimal climate mitigation strategy deploys every feasible zero-carbon technology at scale – including a large expansion of nuclear power alongside massive growth in renewables. “There can be no timely transition without nuclear, because renewables alone are simply unable to replace the entirety of fossil fuel use,” as Earthrise Accord’s manifesto concisely statesearthriseaccord.org. Embracing this reality is the first step. For the IEA, that would mean revising its scenarios and recommendations to reflect nuclear’s true potential rather than its politically constrained present. It would mean telling member countries not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear: that excluding or minimizing nuclear makes their climate goals far harder, perhaps impossible, to achieve. This would be a bracing dose of honesty – a departure from the soothing platitudes of the past. But anything less is to continue living in a collective delusion.

Hand in hand with nuclear realism is the pursuit of clean energy reparations and climate justice, a core principle of Earthrise Accord. If the IEA’s timid guidance over past decades contributed to a slower clean energy rollout (and thus greater climate damages), then it is incumbent on the global community to course-correct aggressively and equitably. Clean energy reparations means holding those who profited from delay – chiefly fossil fuel interests and complicit policymakers – accountable for financing the solutions we now urgently requireearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org. Imagine if the IEA used its platform to advocate that the windfall profits of oil companies be redirected into building new-generation nuclear plants, renewable farms, and grid infrastructure in the developing world. That would be a paradigm shift: the IEA not just as analyst, but as an activist for accountability. Such a stance would have been unthinkable for the agency in its early years, but these are different times. Climate justice demands that the communities who have suffered most from fossil-fueled disinformation and pollution – often Indigenous, marginalized, and Global South communitiesearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org – receive priority in the deployment of clean, reliable energy. Nuclear power, once vilified, now has a chance to be reframed as a tool of empowerment and reparative justice: providing dependable electricity without the air pollution that has blighted so many vulnerable populations’ health.

For the IEA to support this reframing, it must first get its own house in order. That means shedding the institutional cowardice that has muted its voice on nuclear. It means using its considerable influence to dispel the cloud of affective contagion surrounding nuclear discourse – to present facts that counter decades of fear-driven misinformation. The IEA can, for instance, highlight that nuclear energy has prevented at least 60–70 gigatons of CO₂ emissions historicallywww-pub.iaea.org and continues to prevent over a billion tons per year, and that every reactor we fail to build is effectively a forfeiture of additional avoided emissions we can scarcely afford. It can amplify the data showing nuclear’s safety (far safer than coal, oil, or even biomass on deaths per kWh) and its tiny land and material footprint compared to equivalent wind/solar farms. In short, the IEA could choose to fight climate ignorance on all fronts – not only the denial of climate science, but the denial of nuclear science that has, in a quieter way, also cost us precious time.

Will this be easy for an organization so enmeshed in political considerations? No. But evolution is never easy, and the IEA has shown the ability to evolve before. Recall that in the 1980s and 1990s, the Agency was slow to acknowledge the potential of renewables; critics accused it of being overly conservative. Over time, the IEA did pivot – today it is one of the loudest champions of solar and wind. Now it must show a similar adaptability regarding nuclear. The stakes could not be higher. Every year of delay in embracing all zero-carbon options is a year of continued high emissions, pushing us closer to climate tipping points. We cannot afford a dogmatic rejection of nuclear nor the lukewarm half-support that has been the norm. What we need is full-throated advocacy for a holistic clean energy transition. That means informing policymakers that any plan to reach net-zero that doesn’t expand nuclear is almost certainly a plan that fails – or one that relies on hypothetical technologies and massive overbuilds of renewables plus storage that strain credulity. Honesty is the beginning of wisdom in policymaking, as in all things.

In closing, the IEA’s underplaying of nuclear energy is more than a quirk of analysis – it is a cautionary tale of how symbol and sentiment can hijack rational policy, with catastrophic results. It showcases how an institution charged with speaking truth to power can instead become an echo of popular delusions, unless it actively resists the tide of fear and vested interest. The climate emergency leaves no room for such timidity. It is time for the IEA to reclaim the bold spirit of its founding era – the spirit that saw a crisis and was willing to drastically change course in response. In the 1970s, that meant embracing nuclear to escape the grip of oil dictators. In the 2020s, it means doing so again to escape the chokehold of carbon and the gathering chaos of a warming world. The future we refused in the past – the nuclear-inclusive future that was discarded – must be revived now if we are to have any hope of true sustainability.

Earthrise Accord’s motto is “Powering the transition with truth and atoms.” It is an apt prescription for the IEA: tell the truth, and empower the world to use the atoms. Stop treating nuclear as a pariah or a footnote, and start treating it as what it is – a central pillar of any serious climate solutionearthriseaccord.orgearthriseaccord.org. Show the same moral courage in backing this technology as was shown by those 20th-century visionaries who built it, and by the nations that refused to accept fossil dependence as inevitable. Anything less is an abdication of the IEA’s responsibility at this pivotal moment in history. We, and the IEA, owe it to the next generations to get this right. The age of half-measures is over; the age of nuclear realism must begin. The only way off the current collision course with climate catastrophe is through an all-of-the-above clean energy mobilization that leaves no proven solution on the shelf. It’s long past time to dust off the blueprints for the future we actually need, and build it – reactor by reactor, turbine by turbine – until the last smokestack falls silent. No more cowardice. The Earth deserves nothing less.

Sources

The arguments and data in this analysis draw on a range of sources, including the IEA’s own reports and historical records, critical commentary from energy analysts, and prior research published by Earthrise Accord. Key references include:

• International Energy Agency (IEA) Reports

  • IEA Official Website

  • World Energy Outlook 2023

  • Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector

• Critical Analyses of IEA Nuclear Policy

  • "Nuclear Plays Minor Role in IEA World Energy Outlook 2023," NEI Magazine

  • "IEA Sees Greater Role for Nuclear in Attaining Net-Zero by 2050," World Nuclear News

• Earthrise Accord Publications

  • "The Biggest Fossil Fuel Lie: Exposing Anti-Nuclear Misinformation"

  • "Unsymbolized Anxiety, Affective Contagion, and Anti-Nuclear Activism"

  • "Reclaiming Japan’s Energy Future: From Fukushima's Shadow to Nuclear Leadership"

  • Earthrise Accord Mission Statement

These sources, along with others cited in-text, reinforce the conclusion that the IEA’s underestimation of nuclear is historically unjustified and pragmatically untenable in the face of the climate crisis—a disservice we can no longer afford, and one the IEA must urgently rectify.

1. International Energy Agency (IEA) Reports

• World Energy Outlook 2023Provides in-depth analysis of global energy systems, including projections for nuclear energy.Link

• Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy SectorOutlines pathways to achieve net-zero emissions, discussing the role of various energy sources.Link

• Nuclear Power and Secure Energy TransitionsExamines the role of nuclear power in achieving secure energy transitions.Link

2. Critical Analyses and Commentary

• World Nuclear Association's Comments on IEA WEO 2023Provides industry perspective on the IEA's treatment of nuclear energy in its outlook.Link(World Nuclear Association)

• Nuclear Plays Minor Role in IEA World Energy Outlook 2023Discusses the limited emphasis on nuclear energy in the IEA's projections.Link

• IEA Sees Greater Role for Nuclear in Attaining Net-Zero by 2050Highlights the IEA's updated stance on nuclear energy's importance in achieving climate goals.Link

3. Earthrise Accord Publications

• Reclaiming Japan's Energy Future: From Fukushima's Shadow to Nuclear

  Leadership: Explores Japan's potential leadership in nuclear energy post-Fukushima.Link

4. Additional Perspectives

• Inside Fatih Birol's Push to Transform the IEA Into a Clean Energy AuthorityExamines efforts to shift the IEA's focus towards clean energy under its current leadership.Link

• Nuclear Power Absolutely Needed to Reach Climate Goals, IEA's Birol SaysReports on the IEA's acknowledgment of nuclear energy's role in meeting climate objectives.Link