--- title: Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time –... description: Global monthly solar electricity generation first exceeded nuclear output in April 2025, with wind doing the same a month earlier, according to the World... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/solar-surpasses-nuclear-power-globally-for-first-time-pv-magazine-global-bytdfiqbj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time – pv magazine Global | daily.dev og:description: Global monthly solar electricity generation first exceeded nuclear output in April 2025, with wind doing the same a month earlier, according to the World... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/solar-surpasses-nuclear-power-globally-for-first-time-pv-magazine-global-bytdfiqbj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/bytdFiQBj.png og:image:alt: Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time – pv magazine Global og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time – pv magazine Global **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Global monthly solar electricity generation first exceeded nuclear output in April 2025, with wind doing the same a month earlier, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) 2026. Solar capacity grew 27% in 2025 to 2,383 GW while nuclear capacity stayed nearly flat at 399.5 GW, continuing a 25-year plateau. The report highlights nuclear's long construction delays (none of 16 reactors connected 2023-2025 finished on schedule, averaging 10.9 years), China and Russia dominating new construction, and skepticism about small modular reactors delivering on cost and safety promises. Grid-scale battery storage also accelerated sharply, with 104 GW/257 GWh added in 2025. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### When did global solar power generation first surpass nuclear power generation Global monthly solar generation surpassed nuclear output for the first time in April 2025, following wind power which had already overtaken nuclear in March 2025, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026. From March 2025 through June 2026, either solar or wind individually generated more electricity than nuclear every month, and solar surpassed nuclear's annual production for the first time, growing 30% year on year. _Track how fast-moving sectors like clean energy evolve by following in-depth industry analysis on daily.dev._ ### How much nuclear power capacity was added globally in 2025 compared to solar Global nuclear capacity rose by just 1.5 GW in 2025 to 399.5 GW, while operating nuclear capacity actually declined by 0.5 GW to 368.6 GW. In the same period, solar capacity increased by 510 GW (27% year on year) to 2,383 GW, and wind added a record 159 GW to reach 1,291 GW, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026. _Readers comparing energy technology growth rates can follow ongoing coverage on daily.dev._ ### Why are small modular reactors (SMRs) struggling to deliver on their promises Small modular reactors have failed to deliver on claimed advantages like lower costs, modular construction savings, improved safety, reduced waste and easier siting, per the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026. Many commercial SMR designs are 300 MW or larger despite being marketed as 'small,' and some designs could generate two to 30 times more nuclear waste than larger reactors, while development remains heavily dependent on public funding. _Those evaluating emerging energy technologies can keep up with developments like SMRs on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 94 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-17). **TL;DR:** Most commenters see solar's rapid, recent growth (largely driven by China) as genuinely remarkable rather than the result of decades-long subsidy, while a smaller but vocal contingent argues nuclear remains undervalued for grid stability, cost, and geopolitical resilience. **Sentiment:** 55% positive · 30% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Solar's growth is seen as truly exponential and recent (mostly last 4-5 years), not the product of 20+ years of 'fanatical' government support. - Falling battery costs are viewed as the key enabler that will let solar keep scaling and address intermittency. - Decentralized solar is seen as more resilient to military/infrastructure attacks than centralized nuclear plants. - Desert solar farms are argued to have ecological co-benefits rather than purely being a blight. **The pushback** - Nuclear's stable, non-correlated output is valued for reducing reliance on peaker plants and demand-based pricing. - Some argue renewable energy is significantly more expensive than nuclear or gas when accounting for full system costs. - Concerns that all this solar infrastructure will reach end-of-life around the same time, creating a future replacement cost wave. - Skepticism that China's clean-energy push is driven by climate concern rather than manufacturing/export and energy-security motives. - A few raise worries about solar panel production and disposal having significant environmental costs of their own. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Discussion is split between enthusiasm over solar's surprisingly fast exponential growth and pushback from commenters defending nuclear's reliability, cost, and resilience advantages. **Hottest debate:** Whether solar's rise reflects genuine technological/cost triumph versus nuclear being artificially stunted by regulation, with disagreement over which source is actually cheaper and more resilient long-term. **Open questions** - How much of global solar/renewable growth is attributable specifically to China versus the rest of the world? - Can battery storage and HVDC transmission scale fast enough to fully offset solar and wind intermittency? - Will nuclear construction costs and timelines improve enough (e.g., via SMRs) to remain competitive going forward? **Highlights** > Note that this is actual generated terawatt hours. Nuclear power has a substantially higher capacity factor, but solar has been growing so rapidly that it has taken the lead on generated output too. Wind is just about to surpass nuclear generation also, though solar is racing ahead much faster. The next big milestone, not to be reached for several years at the present rate, would be solar generation overtaking hydroelectric generation. You can see data up through 2025 here: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix Even though solar power has been a significant part of the energy conversation for decades, the majority of solar growth is very recent. Nuclear power generated 2762 TWh in 2021, when solar generated 1054 TWh. Solar power generated 2779 TWh in 2025. > — [philipkglass on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50131515) > Nuclear is to solar in terms of energy generation what hydrogen is to electric for cars: it's proponents keep arguing that the other thing doesn't work and will never work, and that you absolutely, positively need their approach. And then it just works and effectively kills off the other technology within a couple of years. Nuclear is basically already dead, and anyone starting new nuclear projects now will look extremely silly in 20-30 years when they finally come online. > — [this\_user on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50131636) > Renewable energy is really expensive. [About 4x more expensive than nuclear, and 14x more expensive than gas.](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4028640) People mistakenly think that because wind and sun are free, renewable energy generation is cheap. > — [Gareth321 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132224) > Centralized energy infrastructure tends to be a military target. Russia targeted Ukraine's nuke plants right off the bat. The US appears to be losing to Iran one strait, pipeline, refinery, or tanker at a time. The neat thing about solar is that it's not cost effective to shoot at--you're gonna spend more on the drone than your enemy is gonna spend replacing that panel. All of the things nuclear has going for it also make it a juicy target, and I'd rather pick up pieces of bombed panels than pieces of bombed reactors. So if you get tired of banging the energy cost drum, consider a fill or two on the adversarial resilience drum. > — [\_\_MatrixMan\_\_ on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132060) > Unless nuclear gets dramatically cheaper one should expect to see basically just the minimum amount of it to maintain grid stability / heavy industry, or something in that direction (I think). Obviously this is quite path dependant. The one thing I really wish people would take away from thinking about energy / grid composition and so on is that its a portfolio construction problem. If you ever, ever, see anyone banging on about how expensive or cheap a particularly type of generation is please just write them off as either an idiot or a liar - what matters is the cost of constructing a portfolio of electricity production that meets the requirements of a nation e.g. running an industrial economy solely off solar power is probably impossible but it seems realistic to imagine a "modern" (politics aside) economy that runs off sending emails on a mixture of solar power and storage. > — [mhh\_\_ on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50131595) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50131256) · 152 points · 94 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first](https://daily.dev/posts/iea-solar-overtakes-all-energy-sources-in-a-major-global-first-ssm00wdrv) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Top 7 Energy Stories of 2025](https://daily.dev/posts/the-top-7-energy-stories-of-2025-el4xekspa) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - 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