Question: considering nuclear is powerful especially in war, how effective could it potentially be

Caroline Roche answered on 15 Jul 2025:

Nuclear weapons are very powerful but there main purpose isn’t to be used but to prevent others from using weapons – Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and the potential long term environmental damage means they are more of a deterrent than a first option.

But nuclear has lots of applications outside of the military; it’s great for baseload power because of it’s reliability and SMRs will be great at handling the power requirements for the next generation of data centers that will be built as AI and data analysis becomes more power hungry. There are also lots of medical applications that use nuclear; some scanners use radioactive tracers, different treatments use radiotherapy or isotopes to threat different issues. Nuclear is currently used for spacecraft and submarine propulsion which is looking to be expanded on in the future. Nuclear applications also lend themselves to cogeneration where a byproduct is used for another application e.g. the excess heat from a nuclear power station can be used to heat offices or homes while the hydrogen produced could be filtered off as another form of clean energy.