While the demand for additional electricity over the past 20 years has been in the range of a few percent per year, AI and data centers will need an estimated 13% to 15% more per year alone for their power-hungry infrastructure.
Meeting this demand will require a mix of energy sources to provide reliable 24/7 baseline electrical power including nuclear, natural gas, and clean coal.
Nuclear plants which currently produce about 19% of the country's electricity must be substantially increased, an imperative made even more crucial as about 20 gigawatts of fossil fuel power were scheduled to retire over the next two years under the Biden administration — enough to power 15 million homes — including a large natural-gas plant in Massachusetts that serves as a crucial source of electricity in cold snaps.
On May 23, 2025, President Trump issued four executive orders as part of the administration’s effort to quadruple U.S. nuclear generating capacity by 2050, promote development of advanced nuclear technologies, build out nuclear fuel supply chains, expedite the licensing process, and increase U.S. nuclear exports.
Last July, President Trump touted tens of billions of dollars in private sector investments that are being raised to provide energy needed to support a major new AI data center hub in Pennsylvania and the surrounding region.
Google said it would put in $25 billion, Blackstone promised $25 billion, AI startup CoreWeave announced a $6 billion investment, and power companies FirstEnergy and Constellation Energy are pledged to pour in billions more.
Those tech power investments are certain to establish Pennsylvania’s position as a leading energy producer to compete for economic rewards of an unstoppable and transformational AI industry revolution, with nuclear playing an increasing role.
Last year, Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced a deal to restart Pennsylvania’s undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island.
Other states are also stepping up opportunities to develop nuclear power resources.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Santee Cooper, a big power provider, is looking for buyers to restart two nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago at South Carolina’s large Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station where construction was halted in 2017.
The stoppage occurred after South Carolina Electric & Gas — now part of Dominion Energy — had already jointly spent around $9 billion.
Nuclear project builder Westinghouse Electric, a contractor at Virgil C. Summer, filed for bankruptcy that year, dealing a another blow to the plans.
Plant Vogtle, operated by Southern Co. in Georgia, the nation’s largest nuclear plant, is adding two new reactors at the site at a cost of more than $30 billion.
New York plans to build the first major new U.S. nuclear plant undertaken in more than 15 years, a policy reversal since the Indian Point nuclear plant roughly 40 miles upriver from Manhattan was closed in 2021 because of environmental concerns and its proximity to so many people down the Hudson River.
Since closing Indian Point which had supplied about 25% of the electricity needs of New York City, the state has since had to burn more fossil fuels to keep the lights on.
Whereas much of the most recent industry resistance to nuclear power had flared up over public safety concerns following the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, in reality, the industry has proven to be one of the safest forms of energy … in fact a hundred times safer than even wind and solar.
No one was hurt because of the failures of either Three Mile Island or Fukushima, and the Chernobyl meltdown was a combination of disastrously bad facility design and lack of operational safety protocols.
And although the nuclear industry has been plagued with cost overruns, Alphabet is aiming to reduce nuclear costs by deploying a series of next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs) through a deal with Kairos Power, with the first such plant to be brought online by 2030.
SMRs offer small and modular advantages of being able to be custom designed for a particular location, then shipped to and installed on site and incrementally added to match increasing demand.
With the advent of modern Generation IV reactors, SMRs can also operate separately from public utility grids in areas lacking adequate capacity.
Rolls Royce Ahas become a major bidder for SMR expansion in the U.K.
Hopes spring eternal that nuclear fusion will play a dominant role in the U.S. and global nuclear power future because it produces no radiation waste and its fuels — deuterium and tritium — can be sourced from seawater and lithium.
The greatest obstacle is managing to maintain a balance between magnetic confinement and the severe heat of 100 million degrees Celsius (about 180 million degrees Fahrenheit).
Who knows?
Maybe AI will help figure out a way to do this if we give it the power to do so.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.