US nuclear builders tight for time in race to power AI

The DOE held a request for information (RFI) from developers until May 7 and cited small nuclear reactors (SMRs), enhanced geothermal systems, fuel cells, energy storage and carbon capture as innovative energy approaches that could be installed at the sites.

These technologies align with the administration’s shift in energy policy away from a focus on renewables to prioritizing more reliable and resilient power sources, said Sidney Fowler, energy attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm in Washington, DC.

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) believes solar farms coupled with storage can be deployed cost-effectively and more quickly than other technologies, due to a well-established supply chain and a track record in providing reliable power to big techs and data centers. Meta, Amazon, Google, and Apple are the top four corporate solar users in the U.S., according to a SEIA report released in November 2024.

The DOE is yet to determine the types and sizes of power generation at the sites as well as the details about potential PPPs.

“We are eager to hear ideas from industry, academia, communities and regional consortia. This will build on the long history of partnership between DOE’s National Laboratories and the private sector,” a DOE spokesperson told Reuters Events.

Expedited permitting on the DOE sites could help developers minimize timelines, especially in areas where site characterization works have already been done, Fowler said. Shorter timelines help lower development costs.

As well offering existing grid connections, some of the sites are away from highly populated areas, reducing project risks.

“Some of the sites have a lot of space where a data center or a power plant could easily locate without running a risk of community opposition,” said Mary Anne Sullivan, senior counsel at Hogan Lovells law firm in Washington, DC.

Sites selected by the DOE include the Idaho National Laboratory, where the department has performed extensive site characterization and permitting activities for new nuclear reactors. The site is located in a region supportive of atomic energy and “offers ample opportunity for development and scaling,” it said.

Also on the list is the Pacific Northwest laboratory in Richland, Washington, located in a region with a growing presence of data centers and planned nuclear deployment. In October 2024, Amazon announced a partnership with Energy Northwest to develop an SMR project near the Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant.

Elsewhere, the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory site in Tennessee is located five miles from Tennessee Valley Authority’s proposed Clinch River Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project and has readily available water resources, which could attract more nuclear development in the future.

Supportive host communities with a long-standing nuclear history, along with high security standards at some of the sites, could favor nuclear power development, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).

“There is already a natural inclination for data centers to seek nuclear power. Bringing, now, DOE land and encouraging that matching is going to be a catalyst to speed up (deployment) but also lead to new projects being pursued,” said Marc Nichol, executive director of New Nuclear at NEI.

While the DOE is clearly keen to support new nuclear, the initial target timelines it has set out for the sites may favour gas-fired plants or combinations of renewable energy technologies.

DOE wants the construction of AI and associated infrastructure to start later this year so the facilities become operational by the end of 2027.

Solar and storage are the “fastest and cheapest forms of energy to develop and deploy” and are the best way to meet the demand for colocated generation, Ben Norris, vice president of Regulatory Affairs for the SEIA, told Reuters Events.

Developing a utility-scale solar project typically takes 1.4 years, and batteries take 1.7 years, SEIA said in a letter sent to the DOE in response to the RFI.

In comparison, large conventional nuclear power plants take years to develop and build and many SMRs under development are based on new designs and are not expected to be approved and ready for commercial use until the end of the decade. In a bid to accelerate deployment, the DOE recently reissued a tender for $900 million of federal funding to help de-risk the construction of the first SMR reactors based on existing light water reactor (LWR) technologies and announced it would supply high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to five companies that are developing SMRs based on a range of technologies.

Even if SMRs are licensed earlier than 2030, a lack of domestic fuel enrichment capabilities will limit deployment.

Nuclear is more likely to play a larger role in serving rising AI demand from the 2030s onwards, experts say.

“The only bottleneck that is going to hold the U.S. back in terms of global AI leadership and dominance is speed to firm, reliable power,” Hilary Lane, senior director for Strategic Partnerships at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said. “So given that this is the most important factor here, time and schedule, I can see them looking at gas as an option that could be coming online fairly quickly.”

“To roll out many reactor systems that could deliver power at that timeframe is a bit unfeasible,” said James Walker, chief executive officer at Nano Nuclear Energy, a company developing microreactors.

“In the future, nuclear will certainly be the bulk supplier of power for tech centers, but that will be post-2030.”