Rising electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence data centers and a focus on emissions-free power have revived interest in nuclear energy, an industry whose last major building spree ended around 1990.
Chris Womack, chief executive officer of Southern Co., which operates the nation’s two most recently built reactors at its Vogtle plant in Georgia, said the country will need a diverse mix of energy sources.
“You can’t put all the eggs in one basket. ‘All of the above’ is very important in terms of meeting this moment, meeting this growing demand,” Womack told the Wall Street Journal. He said Southern Co. will upgrade capacity at its existing nuclear fleet and urged continued support for new construction. “You’ve got to look five years, 10 years, 20 years to generational needs down the road.”
Nuclear enthusiasm first faded in the 1970s as construction costs rose and the growth of electricity demand slowed. Public support collapsed after a partial core meltdown in 1979 at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania triggered days of panic over safety risks. Between 1979 and 1988, 67 planned nuclear projects were canceled, the Energy Department said.
Now, surging electricity demand from the tech sector is pushing nuclear back onto the table. Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, said the company is bullish on nuclear power. In 2024, Microsoft signed a 20-year power deal with Constellation Energy to restart the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. A Microsoft partnership with Nvidia is using AI to accelerate permitting and design, Smith said.
Constellation Energy, which owns more nuclear plants than any other U.S. company, is focused on both new and existing reactors. Dan Eggers, senior executive vice president at Constellation, said small modular reactors — designed to be cheaper and built in factory fashion — could help address the industry’s historic cost problems. “If we can figure out a design that people can be happy with and try and replicate that a series of times, I think that’s going to help on construction,” Eggers said. “It’s going to help on operations costs, and that will all lead to hopefully a better cost profile.”
Eggers also said extending the life of existing reactors and upgrading their output is “really important.”
The Trump administration wants large reactor projects started this decade. The administration said in the fall that it would facilitate the construction of $80 billion in Westinghouse reactors at sites around the country.
NASA is pushing nuclear energy beyond Earth as well. An April White House policy memo called for deploying reactors on the lunar surface by potentially 2030. Under that directive, NASA will work on a program to provide at least a 20-kilowatt system over at least five years on the moon, roughly equal to a whole-house backup system. The goal for the 2030s would be 100 kilowatts. A reactor would offer a consistent supply of electricity through the two-week lunar night, enabling research, mining, and tourism. The White House also wants to put nuclear propulsion systems into orbit as soon as 2028.
Fusion remains a longer-term prospect. Scientists are still working to build a system that reliably produces more energy than it consumes, and many experts consider commercial fusion a decade or more away. Several private U.S. companies are, however, planning first commercial power projects: Helion Energy has agreed to deliver fusion power to Microsoft in 2028 in Washington state; Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building a demonstration reactor in Massachusetts and planning to follow it with a commercial project in Virginia to deliver power to the grid in the early 2030s; TAE Technologies is merging with Trump Media & Technology Group and aiming to break ground this year on a commercial plant, with electricity generation in the early 2030s.
MSI previously reported that Southeast Asian nations are weighing nuclear power to meet similar AI-driven energy demands, as covered in March.