New Delhi, April 13 -- A wave of announcements on targets, funding and commercial collaborations in the past six months signals a global revival of interest in nuclear energy. India's government has also announced a target to increase nuclear-power generation capacity to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2047, about 12 times the current level. Rightly so. Nuclear is the only scalable, low-carbon electricity source that runs 24/7 and can truly displace coal and gas, which together account for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But is this the sole driver of renewed interest in this 70-year-old technology? What has changed-and what role might nuclear play in the world's energy transition?

A technology of peaks and pauses: Nuclear electricity...