Big Tech Embraces Nuclear, But Who Will Pay the Price?—The US Turns Back to Nuclear Power

Source : Le Monde diplomatique: The US turns back to nuclear power https://mondediplo.com/2026/01/09us-nuclear

by Eva Thiébaud • January 2026

AI’s power demands are vast and growing. The Trump administration wants nuclear reactors to meet them. Whether that’s achievable, and whether communities will accept it, is another matter.

We passed cranes, vacant lots and one data centre after another, many still under construction. ‘Check that one out, it’s really huge!’ said Ann Bennett, an activist with the environmental organisation Sierra Club, as she drove us through Virginia’s Loudoun and Fairfax counties close to Washington DC. She was critical of this building explosion. ‘That right there’s the cloud. Just look at it, it’s hard to describe.’

She was right. The landscape is dystopian: behind newly erected powerlines, vast windowless buildings in grey, cream or blue line the straight roads. Over and over we passed huge electrical transformers and building sites. It was only June but temperatures were already soaring above 35ºC. Residents of Virginia’s affluent cities were speeding along ‘Data Center Alley’ in big, air-conditioned cars, heading for their offices in DC or the nearby airport.

Virginia has become the world’s leading data centre hub due to its proximity to the US capital, affordable land, tax incentives, abundant electricity and access to undersea cables that connect North America to Europe. The state is home to hundreds of these centres, with a total installed capacity of 6.2 gigawatts (GW) in the first half of 2025 [1]. Virginia’s electricity generation capacity is 29GW, almost half of which comes from gas-fired power plants.

‘What we want to do is we want to keep it [AI] in this country,’ Donald Trump declared in January 2025 as he announced the launch of Stargate, a $500bn private investment project that plans to fund a network of new data centres across the US. ‘China is a competitor and others are competitors.’ Trump acknowledged that these centres would need ‘a lot of electricity’, and suggested combining data centres with energy generation: ‘We’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their own plants if they want.’ The fossil fuel industry, which gave significant financial funding to Trump’s campaign, has sensed an opportunity: the project offers the ideal excuse for boosting production and stealing a march on renewables.

Three Mile Island accident

The civil nuclear energy sector has been in difficulty in the US since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Undermined by corruption scandals and the collapse of the reactor manufacturer Westinghouse, the industry has been less generous than fossil fuels to the president. But, backed by tech moguls, it is now benefitting from the AI gold rush. Ralph Nader, former Green Party presidential candidate and a longtime opponent of nuclear power, contends that it is ‘unsafe, uninsurable, uncompetitive and unprotectable in terms of national security’.

Data centres accounted for 1.5% of global electricity usage in 2024. They are often criticised for their consumption, but the International Energy Agency (IEA) points out that although their demand for energy will grow significantly over the next five years, it will remain lower than that of industry, electric vehicles or air conditioning [2]. Ultimately, data centres’ energy hunger is a local issue and their proliferation and geographical concentration combine to pose a problem. The US accounts for 45% of global data centre power demand, well ahead of China (25%) and Europe (15%). The effect is especially pronounced in Virginia, where energy demand remained largely stable between the early 2000s and 2020 but has since rocketed due to data centres.

The nuclear power sector can’t survive without subsidies and public guarantees. And that’s what the tech industry is counting on, that’s the only reason they’re talking about reviving nuclear energy

‘We’re experiencing the effects of a race. Everything’s happening much too quickly,’ says Ann Bennett. Between 2022 and 2024, 84% of the total capital invested in Virginia went to data centres [3]. Nationwide spending on technology infrastructure is thought to have added half a percentage point to US GDP in the second quarter of 2025 [4]. According to Brent Goldfarb, co-author of a book on speculative booms and busts, ‘what’s happening right now has all the hallmarks of a bubble. But the situation will continue as long as investors still think they can make money with this technology’. [5]

It’s a bubble that’s being further inflated by the federal government. Large-scale data centre construction has the advantage of boosting an economy hit hard by erratic customs tariffs, high interest rates and the end of some of the Biden-era infrastructure subsidies – not to mention federal job cuts and an exceptionally long government shutdown in autumn 2025.

There is also a question of strategy. Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of technology policy at Aalto University, Finland, points out that ‘from a military perspective, tech giants and their data centres support governments by storing and using AI to process vast amounts of information from cameras and sensors on the battlefield – this was the case with Israel’s offensive in Palestine. And beyond military matters, former whistleblower Edward Snowden taught us that tech companies could agree to grant the US government access to their data, hence their importance to intelligence.’ Lehdonvirta also argues that competition from China – often highlighted by big tech companies – allows the industry to secure ‘both financial and regulatory support from the US government, without which [tech] stock prices would be unsustainable’.

Data centre energy unknowns

The capacity of data centres is now measured in gigawatts – the power of a nuclear reactor. But their energy demands are passing on the uncertainties surrounding AI’s future to the energy sector. Laboratories and research institutes are attempting to make projections. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that data centres will use between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2028 [6] – a difference of 255 TWh, or Spain’s annual energy usage. Michael Leifman, an energy consultant, [7] says that ‘the uncertainty surrounding data centre energy forecasts is huge. First, predictions are uncertain by their very nature. Second, processors could evolve to consume less energy. Cooling systems could also help reduce consumption. There are additional uncertainties about what counts as a data centre. Finally, the greatest unknown of all is that we don’t know what demand will be.’

Other factors could also come into play. Citizens worried about the impact of data centres on the environment are mobilising (the Sierra Club is one example) and could block building projects. A Virginia residents’ association has already taken legal action against the developers of the Prince William Digital Gateway, a proposed 680-hectare technology corridor including dozens of data centres, preventing construction from beginning. Bottlenecks in the supply chain – to do with transport, processors or rare-earth metals – can slow progress.

There is also the basic matter of a lack of connection to the electricity grid. Leifman notes that ‘the US transmission grid is insufficient and improving it will take time.’ Dominion, Virginia’s leading electricity producer, network operator and distributor, wrote to its customers in July 2024 to tell them that big projects would take 12 to 36 months longer than they had previously to be hooked up to the grid – between four and seven years in total [8]. The problem affects the whole of the US. One tech sector spokesperson confirmed that these delays are ongoing, citing ‘the combination of a lack of generation and grid capacity’. Dominion declined to comment.

In order to increase their chances of a connection, data centre developers submit applications to multiple energy suppliers for each project. This practice creates ‘phantom demand’, inflating waiting lists, contributing to the ‘bubble’ effect and complicating planning processes for electricity producers and network regulators. Leifman explains that ‘when in doubt, all the players tend to overestimate demand – no one wants to be responsible for an electricity shortage.’

The figures are mind-boggling. PJM Interconnection, the network regulator covering Virginia and much of the northeastern US, is expecting an increase in electricity demand of almost 500 TWh over the next ten years [9], more than Germany’s annual consumption. It is revising its plans accordingly. Despite having hundreds of renewable projects on its waiting list, PJM has decided to postpone the closure of a coal-fired power plant in Maryland. This decision will stand ‘until transmission upgrades to provide reliable power to the area from other sources are complete’.

‘We’re the ones who pay’

PJM has also accelerated plans to build or expand gas-fired power stations, bringing their capacity to 7.8GW, as well as battery energy storage systems (BESS, 2.3GW) and nuclear power (1.4GW). A PJM press release in May 2025 stated that ‘90% [of that] is expected to be online by 2030,’ and a spokesman emphasised on the phone that ‘reliable generation is needed to power data centres.’ The IEA predicts that, ‘as demand growth is particularly rapid over the next five years, natural gas is the largest source of additional supply’ in the US.

But once built, these CO2-emitting power plants will operate for decades, stymying the development of renewables, which currently provide the most competitively priced energy ‘on an unsubsidised basis’. [10] The new gas-fired stations might even prove to be superfluous. Leifman writes, ‘The financial and environmental costs of speculative overbuild are substantial. Each gigawatt of unnecessary capacity costs between $1 and $2bn to construct.’ Data centres’ increasing energy demands are already driving up electricity prices in the US, and unnecessary infrastructure could increase the burden. Sierra Club activist Ann Bennett concludes, ‘In the end, we’re the ones who pay.’

In the frenzy to generate more energy, tech leaders are drawn to nuclear power. Bill Gates, cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft, is especially keen: ‘If I had to pick the coolest thing I work on, it’s hard to beat harnessing the power of atoms to fuel our world’ [11]. Gates founded and co-financed TerraPower, a nuclear energy company developing a small modular reactor (SMR). The project is awaiting approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build its first model reactor, in Wyoming. Sam Altman, cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is equally enthusiastic. Until spring 2025 he led a startup also aiming to build an SMR; named Oklo Inc, it was funded by the tech sector. Plans for small nuclear power plants are springing up across the US. They would have the advantage of being able to power data centres directly, freeing them from dependence on the grid as well as limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Modular reactors have been in use since the 1950s in nuclear-powered submarines and Russian icebreakers; the technology has also been tested in other contexts [12]. But technical problems and the high cost of the electricity being produced have prevented SMRs – which China and Russia are also interested in – from becoming truly viable. The authors of a 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report on the future of nuclear power write, ‘The main economic question is whether an SMR can be built at a substantially lower unit capital cost … and therefore generate baseload electricity at lower total unit cost’ [13].

MV Ramana, an expert on nuclear power at the University of British Columbia, says, ‘Historically, we used to build smaller plants, but everyone started building bigger and bigger ones simply to achieve economies of scale.’ The recent failure of the NuScale Power Corporation seems to prove him right: after getting NRC approval for its light water reactor design, the Utah-based project eventually fell through. The budget rose from $5bn to more than $9bn, discouraging investors and causing the project to collapse in 2023 [14]. The nuclear industry sees this as a ‘first-of-a-kind’ (FOAK) effect and promises that prices will fall once entire fleets of reactors are built. But the ‘World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025’ warns that ‘it is unlikely that there will be significant cost savings because reductions in cost through learning depend in large part on numbers of units produced’ [15].

Dependent on nuclear power

While waiting for the SMR equation to come good, tech giants are banking on traditional nuclear power to reduce costs and lead times. In 2024 Amazon entered into a direct purchase agreement with the operator of the Susquehanna nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. Another solution is bringing old power plants back online. The announcement of the restart of the remaining Three Mile Island reactor, also in Pennsylvania, has caused a stir. Two and a half hours drive north of Washington DC and three hours southwest of New York City, the plant became infamous in 1979 when one of its reactors melted down just a few months after it was commissioned. Following the accident, a hydrogen bubble formed above the reactor core. The possibility of a major explosion spread panic throughout the US and led to people fleeing the affected areas. The episode brought the development of civil nuclear power in the US to a halt, despite the favourable atmosphere that had been created by the oil crisis several years earlier.

The site’s second reactor was restarted in 1985 but shut down again in 2019 because it was unprofitable – gas is still king in Pennsylvania. But the reactor is now being revived by Microsoft, which has signed a contract to purchase electricity generated at Three Mile Island for 20 years from 2027. Inspections and initial work have already begun. In Middletown, where the plant is located, a few dozen former activists were horrified by the relaunch. ‘A false sense of urgency has been created to make things go as fast as possible,’ said Eric Epstein. I met him at a picnic spot near the plant, the still-shut cooling towers looming behind us. Epstein is a key figure in Three Mile Island Alert, the largest and oldest local anti-nuclear association. He filed a petition with the NRC against the renaming of the site, which has been dubbed the ‘Crane Clean Energy Center’ in honour of industry pioneer Chris Crane. Epstein calls this ‘bad revisionism’.

I was about 30 at the time of the Three Mile Island accident and had four kids. I’ve had another one since. My main worry was always the health of my family. I don’t see this as question of being pro or anti, Democrat or Republican. I see it as a health issue which has been – and still is – almost completely ignored

I met Joyce Corradi at the home of another longtime activist who lives just a few hundred metres from the power station. Corradi cofounded the group Concerned Women and Mothers in 1979. She told me, ‘I was about 30 at the time of the accident and had four kids. I’ve had another one since.’ There was nothing in these women’s conservative, religious upbringings to suggest that they would end up in a lifelong fight against the nuclear industry. ‘My main worry was always the health of my family. I don’t see this as question of being pro or anti, Democrat or Republican. I see it as a health issue which has been – and still is – almost completely ignored.’

These concerns didn’t deter Josh Shapiro, Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and presidential hopeful who readily supported the plant’s recommissioning. States in the US control their own energy policies – which don’t always align with that of the federal government. After the Three Mile Island accident, a number of states imposed nuclear energy moratoria, some of which are still in place. When Shoreham power station, on Long Island in New York State, was shuttered shortly after it was commissioned in the 1980s, the governor backed the closure. Locals had protested against the plant, and one of Long Island’s counties opposed the evacuation plan proposed for its residents in the event of an accident.

Corradi said, ‘In Middletown, Pennsylvania, they’re going to fire up that vulnerable old Three Mile Island plant again. Why? To send electricity to Virginia to power Microsoft’s data centres?’ She pointed out that local residents already live with nuclear waste, which is stored next to power plants in the US, compounding the fear of leaks and further accidents. Heidi Hutner, who made a film about the women of Three Mile Island (Radioactive, 2022), said, ‘Women are at the centre of the struggle there. But the decision-makers are the tech bros, white men obsessed with money and fascinated by technology.’

New reactors in trouble

In the early 2010s, 30 years after the accident, four new reactors were supposed to mark the revival of civil nuclear power in the US. They were to join a fleet of some 50 existing power stations and around a hundred reactors. But long delays and huge cost overruns forced Westinghouse to file for bankruptcy in 2017, and it has since been bought out twice. Two further reactors in South Carolina were abandoned mid-construction after wasting billions of dollars in a scandal dubbed ‘Nukegate’. In 2023 and 2024 two reactors were commissioned at the Vogtle plant in Georgia – seven years behind schedule and at a cost of over $30bn, more than twice the initial budget.

Ralph Nader argues that ‘the sector can’t survive without subsidies and public guarantees. And that’s what the tech industry is counting on, that’s the only reason they’re talking about reviving nuclear energy.’ The second Trump administration has understood this. Energy secretary Chris Wright, who was previously CEO of the major fracking company Liberty Energy and a board member of Oklo Inc, has promised that Three Mile Island will receive a $1bn loan guaranteed by the federal government. According to the US press, the total cost of the project will be $1.6bn. Three Mile Island Alert put out a leaflet when the plant’s restart was announced: ‘The greatest subsidy the nuclear industry enjoys is the Price-Anderson Act, which absolves nuclear power companies from legal liability for the vast majority of costs resulting from an accident. Should TMI have another accident, guess who pays? We do.’

On 23 May 2025 Trump signed a series of executive orders aiming to ‘usher in a nuclear renaissance’. He has asked the NRC to speed up its licensing procedures. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says that the administration is ‘leading the world towards a future fuelled by American nuclear energy. These actions are critical to American energy independence and continued dominance in AI.’ Kratsios was a senior figure at Thiel Capital, the private equity firm founded by Peter Thiel, chairman of Palantir, a company that specialises in analysing large volumes of data, particularly for military purposes.

Trump’s presidential decrees call for an additional 300GW of electricity from nuclear sources by 2050, and aim to have ten new reactors ‘under construction’ by 2030. Tim Judson, director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, says that ‘developing nuclear power plants in the US is actually primarily a way to get back into the international race to sell commercial power stations.’ China and Russia are the main competitors. Westinghouse reactors have already been chosen for upcoming projects in Ukraine and Poland. When Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman visited the US in November, the two countries signed a civil nuclear energy cooperation agreement ‘consistent with strong non-proliferation standards’. Facing competition with Iran, Riyadh has long been asking Washington for access to civil nuclear power and was denied it until now.

Defence also plays a role in the US drive toward nuclear power. Ramana notes that ‘another reason put forward to justify the development of civil nuclear power is that it subsidises the training of a pool of technicians and engineers who can then be recruited to military nuclear programmes.’

The AI race is spurring the redevelopment of nuclear power. But there are open questions around fuel supply, proliferation, waste management and local attitudes towards facilities. Washington’s wealthy suburbs, already reluctant to host data centres, might baulk at accommodating nuclear reactors – however small – and their waste. Finally, it remains to be seen who will bear the cost of big tech’s energy demands, and which other investments will suffer as a result.

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