Can Tech Get Nuclear Power to Move at AI Speeds?

Building new nuclear plants has been mostly dead for decades. That isn’t stopping Amazon, Google and others from making big bets on it to satisfy AI’s unquenchable need for electricity.

Over the past two years, the explosive growth of artificial intelligence has created a dilemma for tech behemoths: How can their data centers meet AI’s mind-boggling need for electricity without befouling the planet in the process?

Amazon, for one, may have found an answer to that question 200 miles southeast of its headquarters, on a patch of sagebrush and tumbleweeds in Richland, Wash. A local public power agency, Energy Northwest, plans to build a new power plant with a new generation of nuclear reactors called small modular reactors, or SMRs. If all goes as planned, the reactors will start pumping out power in the early 2030s, and Amazon will be at the front of the line to buy juice from the new plant.

Amazon isn’t the only company that believes nuclear power, a technology invented in the middle of the 20th century, can help solve the 21st-century electricity problems of AI. Google, Microsoft and others are also betting that a new generation of reactors—along with dormant, decades-old nuclear plants that get a new lease on life—can provide virtually limitless, carbon-free electricity, allowing them to power their AI dreams while keeping their pledges to slash emissions.