No. of Recommendations: 5
There's a lot to swallow here:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/forget-chips-the...Digital infrastructure has become critically intertwined with economic and military power, increasingly aligning public and private nuclear initiatives, Sean Farney, vice president of JLL’s Americas data-center strategy, pointed out. Big Tech companies are increasingly dedicating resources to the development of nuclear energy; Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp. Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. have all made nuclear-energy investments as they scramble to secure megawatts of power in the race to build the most advanced AI models.
The U.S. government has picked up on the nuclear opportunity with a sense of increasing urgency as it aims to close a reported 10-to-15-year development gap with China, according to the Energy Department.
While U.S. energy capacity overall has been stagnant for over a decade, China is adding the equivalent of the entire U.S. power capacity to its own grid every 18 months. At the current pace, China could overtake the U.S. in nuclear capacity by 2030, according to BofA’s Tran.
Nuclear energy was one of the top discussion topics during Trump’s visit to the U.K. this week, as Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed a technology partnership involving investments in AI and nuclear power.
Building nuclear infrastructure is no easy feat. While SMRs are cheaper and quicker to build than traditional energy plants, fusion technology is still nascent.
Benjamin Lee, an engineering and computer-science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, sees potential in the technology but acknowledged pragmatic constraints.
“Nuclear is not a near-term solution. It may not even be a medium-term solution,” Lee told MarketWatch. “We don’t have an established industry that knows how to build nuclear on time and on budget.”
By contrast, Tran pointed out that China can build nuclear plants in a three- to five-year time frame.
Strict regulation, high upfront costs and a loss of expertise after a long pause in nuclear-plant building all pose challenges to nuclear development in the U.S. today. However, the urgent nature of the AI race could help alleviate the “tremendously high regulatory hurdle,” according to Farney, as the Trump administration has been pursuing energy deregulation. With increased government support, Farney estimates that the time to deploy SMRs in the U.S. could be cut down from seven years to three.
Jeff
