The US will need 10 GW of new large-scale nuclear capacity in going forward, but financial challenges remain, Southern Co. President, CEO and Chair Chris Womack said at a conference June 27.

"This country will need more nuclear plants going forward," Womack said at the Reuters NEXT Global Energy Transition Conference in New York. "It's upwards of 10 large gigawatts that I think we have to have."

Womack advocated for cost-overrun insurance and other government incentives to derisk future nuclear development and encouraged the industry to invest in additional nuclear, including advanced technologies such as small modular reactors.

"We have to bring to scale," Womack said. "We've got to make investments but we've also got to attract others to be a part of those investments because this stuff is very expensive, so I can't do it by myself."

Southern recently completed the two-unit expansion of its Alvin W. Vogtle Nuclear Plant in Georgia that began nearly two decades ago, an undertaking that was plagued by cost overruns and schedule delays.

While Womack said no technology is better suited to meet US demand growth than nuclear, and urged the federal government to offer incentives nuclear expansion, he was clear during a May earnings call that there were no immediate plans at Southern to take on another nuclear expansion.

"We're going to celebrate what we've done at Vogtle for a very long time before we give any consideration to any more [nuclear]," Womack said at the time. "But we think others have the opportunity and should really look at, this country should really look at, new nuclear to go forward to meet this growing demand."

Rising US power demand and Vogtle's completion are raising the profile of nuclear as a carbon-free answer to US energy needs, and many utilities are weighing capacity increases at existing plants or even repowerings.

NextEra Energy Inc. President, CEO and Chair John Ketchum told Bloomberg earlier in June that datacenter customers have approached the power provider interested in its Duane Arnold Energy Center site in Iowa. The 679.5-MW nuclear plant, which began operating in 1975, was shut down in 2020 after it was damaged in a derecho, a few months before its planned retirement.

"I would consider it if it could be done safely and on budget," Ketchum said of repowering Duane Arnold.

The nuclear plant is now being decommissioned, and NextEra is adding solar and battery storage resources to the site.