Chamath @ 00:32:38Inconclusive
climatesciencegovernment
Large-scale adoption or revival of advanced nuclear power (e.g., fusion or new fission designs) will likely not occur for multiple decades and will probably only happen after a major, clearly cataclysmic climate-change-related event forces governments to adopt a super-abundant energy source as a last resort.
we've taken so many steps backwards from nuclear that it's probably just going to take decades and it's going to take some cataclysmic climate change event where the only way out is the super abundant energy source, where you're willing to basically say, ah, fuck it, we're fucked. OtherwiseView on YouTube
Explanation
Based on information up to November 30, 2025, this prediction cannot yet be decisively evaluated.
Chamath’s normalized claim has two key parts:
- Timing: “Large-scale adoption or revival of advanced nuclear power … will likely not occur for multiple decades.”
- Trigger: It will “probably only happen after a major, clearly cataclysmic climate-change-related event” that forces governments to adopt it as a last resort.
What has actually happened so far (2021–2025):
- There has not been a single, globally-recognized, discrete “cataclysmic” climate event that clearly and directly triggered a worldwide, emergency-driven pivot to advanced nuclear. There have been severe climate-related disasters (wildfires, heatwaves, floods, etc.), but no specific event that is widely understood as the tipping point that suddenly made governments adopt nuclear as a last resort on a global scale.
- There is no large-scale deployment of advanced nuclear (fusion or new fission designs) in commercial operation yet. Fusion has seen major experimental milestones (e.g., ignition at the U.S. National Ignition Facility in 2022), but this is research, not grid-scale deployment. Advanced fission (e.g., SMRs, Gen III+/IV designs) has a mix of:
- Projects under construction or in planning (e.g., in China, UK, France, and others) and
- Notable setbacks (such as cancellations or delays of some SMR projects in the U.S. and elsewhere). None of this amounts to a clear, global large-scale adoption of advanced nuclear as of late 2025.
Given that his timeline was “decades” (plural) and we are only about 4 years past the 2021 prediction, it’s far too early to judge whether advanced nuclear adoption will indeed take “multiple decades” and be driven only by a cataclysmic event. The world could still:
- Rapidly accelerate advanced nuclear deployment well before multiple decades have passed (which would make him wrong), or
- Drift along with slow progress and then, in the 2030s–2040s, experience a major climate catastrophe that finally unlocks a large, last-resort nuclear buildout (which would make him broadly right).
Because neither of those long-term futures has had time to play out by 2025, and no current facts clearly contradict his multi-decade, post-catastrophe framing, the correct status is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than right or wrong.