When the servers that train the latest language models hum through the night, they draw power the way small cities do: relentlessly and at scale. That accelerating appetite has nudged policymakers and power companies toward a source many assumed would remain in the background for decades — nuclear energy, and increasingly its smaller, factory-built cousin: the small modular reactor (SMR).
The immediate problem: AI needs a lot more electricity
AI training farms and hyperscale data centers are reshaping electricity demand forecasts. Government analysts estimate the share of commercial electricity used by large AI data centers could climb from a modest slice just a few years ago to a double-digit percentage within the decade. That surge is forcing cloud operators, defense planners and energy strategists to ask blunt questions: where will the reliable, carbon-light baseload come from, and how fast can we build it?
The answer many are circling back to is nuclear — not just the sprawling, bespoke plants of the past but a new ecosystem of smaller, quicker-to-deploy designs. The Trump administration’s recent executive push to accelerate new reactors reflects how urgent the conversation has become; investment capital and stock market moves followed suit as investors priced in the prospect of a nuclear buildout.
SMRs: promise, practicality and political momentum
SMRs carry three practical appeals for data center operators and national planners. First, they can be prefabricated in factories and shipped to sites, which promises shorter on-site construction times and lower labor uncertainty than traditional megaprojects. Second, some designs can operate off-grid, offering data centers a way to avoid straining local distribution networks and to build resilient, dedicated power supplies. Third, they produce continuous, low-carbon electricity — an attractive attribute for companies under pressure to shrink their emissions footprints.
Those technical advantages have translated into enthusiasm from both startups and utilities. Politicians see energy independence and industrial opportunity; companies see a potential hedge against volatile natural gas prices and grid outages. That dynamic is especially vivid where hyperscale computing meets national-security priorities: AI for defense uses both computational heft and a stable, secure power source.
Costs, timelines and the Georgia cautionary tale
But nuclear’s revival is not a frictionless story. The history of U.S. reactor construction is littered with delay and cost overrun. New projects — even those hailed as modern and lean — still face complex permitting, financing and supply-chain challenges. A recent generation-scale project in Georgia has been held up as a practical illustration: it demonstrates how nuclear can deliver enormous amounts of reliable clean power, while also highlighting the financial and regulatory risks that can accompany large reactors.
For data center operators that need capacity now, the mismatch between urgent demand and nuclear’s lead times is stark. Building new reactors — SMRs included — still requires licensing, site studies, cooling arrangements, and community engagement. That’s one reason many tech companies are hedging: they’ll combine existing gas, renewables, storage and efficiency measures while keeping an eye on nuclear as a long-term, lower-carbon anchor.
Creative fixes and hybrid approaches
Engineers and planners have begun thinking beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. Ideas range from repurposing naval reactors or aviation-derived turbine technology to pairing reactors with advanced storage, waste-heat reuse or dedicated transmission corridors to data centers. Some firms are even exploring non-terrestrial options: proposals to put data centers in space or otherwise relocate compute to unconventional sites reflect the same imperative — secure, plentiful power — pursued in different directions. (See how projects to put AI infrastructure off-planet are gaining attention in industry conversations.) Project Suncatcher is an example of these out-there alternatives that illustrate how creative the sector is becoming.
At the same time, the industry is mindful of quality and environmental consequences. The growth of cheap, low-quality AI content — a creeping risk to the internet’s signal-to-noise ratio — is one of the unexpected social costs tied to rapid expansion of AI compute. As researchers warn about “AI brain rot,” the energy choices we make will shape not only environmental outcomes but the character of digital knowledge itself. For more on those concerns, see the recent analysis of how low-quality online text could degrade AI reasoning. /news/ai-brain-rot-study
A pragmatic tempo: near-term fixes, long-term bets
Smart planners are splitting the problem. Near term: lean on existing grids, gas peakers, renewables and batteries to keep the lights on for burgeoning compute loads. Medium to long term: invest in SMRs and advanced reactors where licensing, financing and community buy-in make sense. The industry’s realism is growing: nuclear is neither a silver bullet nor an overnight fix. It is, however, a scalable piece of the puzzle if the political will, regulatory clarity and supply chains line up.
So where does this leave companies racing to build the next generation of AI models? They will chase power from many corners — gas turbines for flexibility, solar for cheap marginal cost, batteries for smoothing, and, when the lead times and capital align, nuclear for steady baseload. Expect pilot SMR projects to pop up near data hubs, utilities to negotiate new long-term contracts with cloud operators, and continued debate over the trade-offs between cost, speed, safety and carbon.
The nuclear revival is not merely a technical shift; it’s a negotiation about priorities: speed versus safety, local impacts versus national capacity, immediate profits versus long-term resilience. That negotiation will determine whether nuclear becomes the backbone of an AI-powered economy — or a costly footnote in the broader story of how we keep the lights on for an increasingly hungry digital world.