Nuclear energy is seeing a renaissance with small modular reactors being developed and a wave of new construction in major economies including China, Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, told Yahoo Finance.

“There is a lot of excitement around certain nuclear technologies, and the question is going to be, do these play out differently than the large nuclear plants we have today that have not hit cost points; they have been slow and long to build, and, obviously, we've seen the problems at Fukushima and other plants,” Mr Kammen said.