To fuel the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence, tech companies are going big on small nuclear reactors.
“If you combine the need for resilient power with the need for clean power and the emerging availability of these designs, you get a great upswing in interest,” says nuclear engineer Kathryn Huff of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Traditional nuclear plants require massive investment up front, a hurdle that has stalled the building of new reactors in the United States for decades. The first newly constructed reactors built in the country in 30 years — two in Waynesboro, Ga., that switched on in 2023 and 2024 — cost around $30 billion. The construction was years behind schedule and billions over budget.
With smaller reactors, Huff says, it’s easier to build components offsite in a factory and ship them where they need to go, rather than custom building them from raw materials on site. “The more you can build these reactors like airplanes rather than airports, the cheaper it’s generally going to be.”In the United States, nuclear power currently boasts support from both Democrats and Republicans, an unusual situation that has allowed the sector to thrive, even as political powers shift.
Some reactors use fuel that’s different in more obvious ways, too. X-energy and Kairos, for example, will use TRISO fuel: encapsulated, poppy seed–sized pellets of uranium contained within larger spheres of material, each the size of a tennis ball. The fuel is “extremely robust to very high temperatures for very long times,” Huff says. “It gives you this extra layer of defense.”