The new push towards small nuclear reactors – Why is this happening?
Nuclear technology carries the promises of an avenue out of reliance on fossil fuel. Perhaps it might be a key strategy to minimise adverse environmental effects. However, its development in a safe manner has been hampered by concerns of safety.
In this article, we simply alert to the imminence of a renewed push to nuclear power. We note that Karl Marx viewed technological advances in one area would result in the generation of advances in others. In this instance, it is the case we believe that technical advances in computing and artificial intelligence are pushing onwards changes in nuclear technology.
1. The left’s divergences on the question of nuclear power.
On the left, two views can be found. We do not attempt a complete literature review. But the two poles can be illustrated by a recent dialogue that was held.
Some argue that especially with continued capitalist drives for profit, nuclear power remains a danger for workers – the capitalist calls for it cannot be trusted (Hari Kumar; “Questions Arising From David Walters: ‘Fighting Climate Change with Fission Energy, A Marxist Perspective.’ Berlin Left 22.06.2022; ).
Other Marxists strongly dispute such concerns, saying that health dangers have been exaggerated and the imperative for ecological changes favours nuclear power (David Walters “ Fighting Climate Change with Fission Energy. A Marxist Perspective.” 22/06/2022 “ Berlin Left).
Nonetheless, quite regardless of what Marxists think, there are renewed pressures which are likely to force the development of nuclear power. It seems likely that decisions will be taken completely out of the hands of the working class regardless of its views. Why is the capitalist class of dominant Western powers likely to do this? It is certainly not because of concerns on environmental dangers – rather to support their concerns about falling profits, and the enormous hopes they place on the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
2. Why is Artificial Intelligence seen by Capital as crucial for its survival?
Developments to nuclear power will occur because of the capitalist perceptions of its own imperative to develop AI. One major limiting factor on the current use of AI, is the extraordinary amount of energy it requires. But why is AI seen as so necessary?
(i) Restructuring to ward off falling profits
It seems that AI has become one key element of “re-structuring”. Indeed capitalists and the ruling class in several countries see it as a crucial part. We could think of it as a perceived panacea by capitalism. For capitalism has been suffering from a decline in its profitability over recent years. We have argued before that this is driving the capitalists led by the USA and China respectively – into a new world war.
Many Marxists believe that the decline of profitability is related to the ‘tendency to a falling rate of profit’. This was first put as ‘a law’ or a ‘tendency’ by Karl Marx:
“Each individual product, taken by itself, contains a smaller sum of labour than at a lower stage of development of production, where the capital laid out on labour stands in a far higher ratio to that laid out on means of production. The hypothetical series we constructed… expresses, the actual tendency of capitalist production. With the progressive decline in the variable capital in relation to the constant capital, this tendency leads to a rising organic composition of the total capital, and the direct result of this is that the rate of surplus-value, with the same or even rising, is expressed in a a steadily falling general rate of profit… The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, thus simply, the expression, peculiar to the capitalist mode of production of the progressive development of the social productivity of labour. This does not mean to say that the rate of profit may not fall temporarily for other reasons as well, but it does prove that it is a self-evident necessity, deriving from the nature of the capitalist mode of production itself, that as it advances the general average rate of surplus-value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit. Since the mass of the living labour applied continuously declines in relation to the mass of living labour that it sets in motion by it, i.e., the productively consumed means of production, the part of the living labour that is unpaid and objectified in surplus-value, must also stand in an ever decreasing ratio to the value of the total capital applied. But this ratio between the mass of surplus-value and total capital applied in fact constitutes the rate of profit, which must therefore rate steadily fall.”
Karl Marx; “ Capital Vol. III Part III. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall Chapter 13. The Law As Such“; London Penguin 1991; Tr Fernbach; p. 318-9; or a version is at: MIA
There remains considerable controversy over this today in the Marxist left.
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall has been defended by some, who also offer an empirical proof (Michael Roberts, Guglielmo Carchedi; “A Critique of Heinrich’s, ‘Crisis Theory, the Law of the Tendency of the Profit Rate to Fall, and Marx’s Studies in the 1870s’” Monthly Review; December 1, 2013; at: ).
But some Marxists emphatically refute this notion. Michael Heinrich for example claims that Marx’s own further enquiry did not confirm this (Michael Heinrich; “Crisis Theory, the Law of the Tendency of the Profit Rate to Fall, and Marx’s Studies in the 1870s”; Monthly Review at 1 April 2013). David Harvey argues Marx’s proposition is flawed as:
“Unfortunately his argument is incomplete and by no means rigorously specified… Unfortunately Marx’s falling rate of profit argument is not particulary well-honed or rigorously defined even as a purely theoretical proposition”; and
“Marx lists six countervailing tendencies in ‘Capital’.
David Harvey; “The Limits to Capital”; London 2018; p.178-81.
When Marxists disagree with Marx’s verdict here, they usually invoke In addition the decline in markets with an increasing competition (Michael Roberts; “The Long Depression”; Chicago 2016; pp.14-15 ).
We intend to return to this more comprehensively. However here, we simply want to alert that capitalists are going likely to go nuclear anew. That this is in a chase for profits will hardly be disputed by Marxists of either pole on the question of whether there is or is not – a law of a falling rate of profit in capitalist society.
(ii) Changing technology of war
The advent of AI has been a boon for the war mongers. It is likely to reap even further dividends for the capitalists. This is easily illustrated from two wars ongoing now. The Russian attack on the Ukrainian state, and the Israeli on-going genocide on Palestinians.
Nadim Nashif, the founder and executive director of 7amleh, a Palestinian digital rights organisation talked to the Financial Times (FT) recently on the Israeli testing of new warfare systems based on AI – in the hell of Gaza. So did experts of the misnamed ‘Israeli Defence Force’ (IDF) (Tal Nimran a legal scholar at Hebrew University: “I served as a legal adviser for 10 years in reserve duty, sitting in target rooms and giving advices on policy issues for the IDF; and Hamutal Meridor, “the co-founder of an Israeli start-up named Kela, one of a new breed of Israeli companies developing emerging tech for the military:
“Nashif: Those technologies are actually maximising the killing and enlarging the circles of targeted people in Gaza. And that’s why we are seeing more than 18,000 children being killed. So much casualties, so much destruction that is happening because of the horrible use of AI.”. . .
Tal Mimran:
“Mimran seems to be saying is that AI has multiplied potential targets, allowing Israel to carry out a week’s worth of strikes in just one day. Israel’s AI capabilities are often described as decision support systems. They include programmes with names like Gospel, which aims to identify infrastructure and building targets; Lavender, which recommends human targets, and a programme called Where’s Daddy?, which flags when a potential target has arrived home. The AI systems do what used to be done by human operators, but faster. . .
Hamutal Meridor:
“you can think of a border protection system that fuses together different types of sensors and drones and autonomous vehicles to build a truly autonomous border, which is not something that has been properly built and deployed… there’s a suspicious activity somewhere on the border. You have different sensors like radars, like cameras, day and night, like Lidars, like RF sensors, whatever it is. And one of them picks up a suspicious activity, and you have a soldier or a commander that is in charge of that border section, and we’ll see an alert pop up. This system can also classify the suspicious activity. This is where AI kicks in,obviously. And these are things that all exist today, it’s just building that full kind of autonomy.”
John Thornhill, Innovation editor; in ‘Tech Tonic’ Transcript: Future weapons — Battlefield AI Financial Times; 29 April 2025.
While in the same interview, Elke Schwarz, professor of political theory at Queen Mary University London and the vice chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control – says that this development of AI:
“is really a trajectory that started in the 2010s with the drone wars and the algorithmic information platforms that helped towards identifying targets, whether that’s through signature strikes or personality strikes. . .
The whole history of warfare and tools of warfare and enacting violence with tools has been towards distancing the person enacting the violence or using force from the actual target as such. . .
So for example, you might have an AI decision support system like ‘Lavender’ that gathers various data sources and then comes up with a potential viable target and gives you a ranking as to which is the most likely viable target in descending order, perhaps, the top will be set on a kill list and then human operators in that action chain have not 20 minutes, but 20 seconds to evaluate that suggestion. So it becomes really, really fast.”
Ibid
The compulsory internal requirement of capital to continue to accumulate more and more – leads to utilising any developments it can. This has led to a renewed push on the parts of the ruling class, currently determined to expand AI – to develop and advocate for small-scale nuclear power units. We believe this determination is part of the mandate for re-structuring the USA capitalist state under President Trump of the USA. No geographical area of capital will be ‘left behind’ in this development.
3. Marx on the stages of development of industry in overcoming ‘fetters’
Marx’s most concise general statement of historical materialism can be said to be contained in the following:
“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”
Karl Marx 1859; “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” – Preface;” at MIA
This is disputed by some Marxists who argue that this is superseded by Marx’s other views of what drives societal change – for example the question of ‘disposable time’. Latterly this has been articulated by the independent Marxist Tom Walker. See for example:
““Marx had a lot more to say in the Grundrisse about productive forces that is very different from the conventional reading based on the 1859 preface. Relying exclusively on the latter is like writing a high school book report based on the dust jacket blurbs.“
Tom Walker; “Growth below zero and the development of the productive forces”; November 17, 2023; (Tom Walker 2023)
The statement by Marx above from the “Critique” however is what has come to be at the core of historical materialism for Marxist-Leninists. We will return to Tom Walker and his school at another juncture in more depth. But the objection raised by Walker – following Martin Nicolaus – should be flagged here.
Historically at a certain stage in the development of merchant capitalism, it was able to overcome the feudal fetters that it faced in order to develop. In another famous passage, Marx and Engels describe how this had unfolded in the victory of capital over feudalism – in “The Communist Manifesto”:
“At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. . .
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
“Manifesto of the Communist Party”; Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians’; MIA
But this ‘sorcerer’s’ process goes on even after the victory of capitalism over feudalism. Especially as in today’s situation – where a stage is prolonged well past its due date – ie capitalism is more than ‘over-ripe’. Capitalism is in its late stages. So with the 20th century waves of socialism having for the time being ebbed, we have not moved into the societal stage of socialism. Nonetheless capitalist technology continues to develop and it ‘transforms’ all branches of industry.
Marx explicitly discussed the way in which this occurs. Technical advances continue, and as they do they ‘transform’ a given ‘mode of production’. This of itself it will “necessitate a similar transformation in other spheres”:
“The transformation of the mode of production in one sphere of industry necessitates a similar transformation in other spheres. This happens at first in branches of industry which are connected together by being separate phases of a process, and yet isolated by the social division of labour, in such a way, that each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus machine spinning made machine weaving necessary, and both together made the mechanical and chemical revolution compulsory in bleaching, printing, and dyeing. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton-spinning called forth the invention of the gin, for separating the seeds from the cotton fibre; it was only by means of this invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required.”
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry
p.505 Tr Fowkes; London 1990 Pelican edition; a differing version is also at MIA
A more modern translation has the opening lines of this passage as:
“When the mode of production is revolutionized in one sphere of industry it has to be revolutionized in others as well. . . “
“Capital” Volume 1”: Tr.Reiter P; Eds North P & Reiter P: Princeton; 2024; p. 353
4. Warnings that nuclear is coming
The discussion now on nuclear energy revolves around small ‘modular’ nuclear power reactors (SMRs). In the opening segment several commentators make a series of linked – but opposing – statements. The broader society – has exactly the same dilemmas that we explored above in the Marxist community. They have not reached any consensus either:
“Lately we have been hearing a lot about this concept of small modular nuclear reactors.”
“SMRs are the future of nuclear power generation. We need all the nuclear power we can if the world has a hope of getting to net zero by 2050.”
“It won’t be cheaper than the big ones, and the big ones are already the most expensive electricity we’ve ever known. “
“The demand for cloud storage and AI has gone up enormously. And that’s why these tech companies are so interested in stable nuclear power. “
“Environmentalists should acknowledge that nuclear power is not the devil that they have held nuclear power to be. “
“It was going to generate cheap electricity. That’s ultimately the promise. That has simply not happened.”
“I think nuclear industry has a bad name because it has wasted so many taxpayer dollars over time, and no one has ever apologised for it.”
“Pilita Clark; Business Columnist Financial Times, “When Tech goes Nuclear”;Interviews in video April 15, 2025; at: FT April 15 2025; ; or:
You tube
Lots more interesting snippets follow, such as these:
1’ 57” Marco Visccher journalist and author of ‘The power of nuclear”:
“The industry has been talking about a nuclear renaissance for about 25 years. Don’t believe it. Since 2000, some 120 reactors or so have come online in the same period. That same number of reactors have been shut down permanently.
If you look at the share of electricity produced in the world, that was around 17 per cent in the mid-1990s. Today, it’s only 9 per cent. This is not what a nuclear renaissance looks like. World leaders are promising and making pledges to triple nuclear capacity. All this is great, but so far it’s just words. And for a nuclear revival, we will need more than words. We need to build. . . .
3’ 05”: “We will not be able to solve global warming if we don’t increase our use of nuclear power spectacularly. And this will be hard, given the dominance of fossil fuel companies and given the popularity of wind and solar.
2’ 26” M.V.Ramana Physics Professor and author “Nuclear is not the solution“; “I think we are experiencing one more cycle of talk about nuclear renaissance. We’ve seen this kind of cycle happen before. For example, in the beginning of the century, under both Tony Blair government in the UK and the George Bush administration in the United States, there was a lot of talk about nuclear renaissance. There were about 30 reactors ordered by utility companies around the United States.
In fact, only four of them went into construction. And of those four, two of them were abandoned after about $9bn were spent. The hype never seems to match with the reality.
3’ 20”: “The average nuclear plant takes about 10 years between the time you start pouring concrete in the ground and it starts generating power and supplying it to the grid. But usually there’s another period of five or 10 years that is required to get the environmental clearances, to get the safety permissions, to, if you are going to a new site, finding a community that is willing to live near this very risky site, and last but not least, to raise the tens of billions of dollars you need, whereas renewables can be built much more quickly. So when you put money into nuclear power, you’re not only starving renewables. You’re also making it so much later for the emission reductions to happen.”
The Interviewer Pilitta Clark inserts the comment early on that:
“4’ 00”: The nuclear industry has a problem. Its power plants have a habit of running over budget and over time. But now it thinks it can fix this with so-called small modular reactors.”
Ibid;
However – even as these non-Marxists display many of the same disagreements as do Marxists, these have no bearing on end results. The highest echelons of the ruling class in the USA have already decided the “need” for nuclear power will be fulfilled.
Here for example is Hank Paulson – former US Treasury Secretary, who highlights in addition -the “race with China”:
“One of the most urgent and under-appreciated energy challenges facing the US is the artificial intelligence race with China. America is in the lead, but Beijing is investing heavily to close the gap. The question for Washington is: can the US stay ahead without a national energy strategy to power it?
The energy landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reshaped it overnight. Prices soared and governments scrambled to reduce reliance on Russian gas. Energy security became paramount. As Europe and other regions that are not energy independent seek to address these vulnerabilities, they are increasingly looking to solar and wind to reduce fossil fuel dependence.
China is forging ahead, pairing long-term industrial strategy with massive investment in both AI infrastructure and the energy to support it. Its data-centre market is expected to grow by nearly $275bn between 2025 and 2029. It invested more in renewables in 2024 than the US, EU and UK combined. Beijing’s clear ambition is to dominate the technologies of the future, understanding that energy policy will be key.
Meanwhile, in the US, as AI models become more complex and are deployed at greater scale and cloud power grows, electricity demand is rising faster than utilities can build capacity. Some data centres now consume as much power as mid-sized cities. In Virginia, they consumed roughly a quarter of the state’s power load in 2023. This has increased concern over strains on the system and higher residential bills, leading to new regulations and an effective moratorium on building data centres in the state.
The US must develop and deploy a clear-eyed national energy strategy that prioritises speed, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Since demand for electricity substantially exceeds supply, it makes sense to think of clean electricity as an “addition” to existing energy supplies. In fact, nearly all additional electricity in the US last year came from solar and wind — traditional energy sources can’t meet the need.
Gas cannot fill the void in the short or medium term because of turbine shortages. Coal won’t solve the problem because decommissioned utilities cannot be ramped back up fast enough to meet urgent needs (and air pollution harms health). Expansion of nuclear power is an essential part of the solution, but the US lags years behind and China is far ahead in developing cutting-edge nuclear power.
Given America’s abundance of natural gas, many data centres will still rely on it but smarter, faster models are emerging. For example, a hybrid model that uses solar and battery storage or peaking gas backup in periods of high demand is quicker to scale up, because of equipment order and assembly lead times, air permits and interconnection. These also require less upfront investment, and “all-in costs” are comparable to baseload gas.”
Hank Paulson; “Clean energy will be critical to winning the AI race with China”;
Financial Times; 27 April 2025
Conclusion and the current debate on the Marxist left
Regardless of the Left’s agreements or disagreements on the wisdom of an energy policy under capitalism of nuclear power, it is very likely to be pushed forward. The impetus is to serve as a support of Artificial Intelligence.
Finally, we will here simply note the implications of these developments on the ‘degrowth’ movement. We have commented on this movement before, in 2019 (“Situating Today’s Climate Activists of the ‘Fridays for Future’ Movement” at Marxist-Leninist Currents 2019). But further updates are needed.
In the meantime we link to a translated article from Esteban Mercatante (“Kohei Saito and the critical ecology of Karl Marx – Reprint from Esteban Mercatante”) that we have placed at our own site at: May 1 2025 MLRG.online. We can recommend this as a good update that deals with some important new materials – again showing a dichotomy in the Marxist movement.
This dichotomy is between some calling for a ‘degrowth’ and those arguing – as we do – that the environmental problems are not solved by ‘degrowth’.
In our opinion, ‘saving the environment’ – is a goal that revolves around the question of whether and how the working people can take over State power.
