Solar out-generated nuclear worldwide in 2025: 2,779 TWh against 2,703
Wind passed nuclear in a single month in March 2025, solar followed in April, and by the year's end solar had taken the full-year lead too.
Nuclear's share of global electricity fell to 8.8%, its lowest in roughly four and a half decades, down from a 17.5% peak in 1996. The World Nuclear Industry Status Report also counts 73 reactors under construction, the most since 1987.
Commenters mostly fought over whether the headline is the right comparison: capacity factor, build cost, or a portfolio of both.
What the nuclear industry's own annual report found
The figures come from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026, overseen by consultant Mycle Schneider and summarized by pv magazine. Nuclear generated 2,703 TWh in 2025, up 1.1%, almost entirely thanks to a 7.6% jump in China; outside China it fell 0.2%. Solar grew about 30%.
Installed capacity tells the same story at a larger scale: solar reached 2,383 GW (+510 GW, +27%), wind 1,291 GW (+159 GW, a record), nuclear 399.5 GW (+1.5 GW). Seven reactors closed and four started, the first negative annual balance since 2021, though 12 construction starts were the most since 2010. One footnote: IEA PVPS data put 2025 solar additions near 690 GW, about 180 GW above the report's figure.
A decade of numbers in one comment
"Nuclear power generated 2762 TWh in 2021, when solar generated 1054 TWh. Solar power generated 2779 TWh in 2025." — a commenter citing Our World in Data
That is solar growing 2.6× in four years while nuclear stood still. The same commenter noted that nuclear's higher capacity factor makes the crossover on generated output more striking than on capacity. A reader then pointed out that wind had not crossed nuclear on an annual basis yet, only monthly.
Portfolio, not a horse race
"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." — mhh__, who argues grids are a portfolio-construction problem
His point: the useful number is the cost of a mix that meets a nation's demand. Running an industrial economy on solar alone is "probably impossible", but he finds a storage-backed solar mix plausible for much else.
Nuclear's defenders replied that reactors are cheap to build when rules hold still, and that delays from changing policy are what inflate costs. The report supports neither side outright, but 73 reactors in construction, 37 of them in China, means the nuclear line keeps rising slowly while the solar line keeps compounding.
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