Nuclear's moment is here

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Every source of new electricity generation is constrained right now. Solar panels require silicon, and supply has limits. Wind turbines have lead times measured in years. Gas turbines are backlogged. Grid connection queues were already running years long before AI data centers started driving power demand to levels that have caught utilities flat-footed.

The result is something like an all-hands-on-deck moment for electricity. That means nuclear, long dismissed as too expensive and too slow, is back in the mix.

Microsoft $MSFT signed a deal to restart Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, the site of America's worst commercial nuclear accident in 1979. Meta $META struck agreements with TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed reactor developer, and Oklo, a small modular reactor startup backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, plus a 20-year purchase deal for power from existing plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Google $GOOGL is backing the reopening of a shuttered Iowa plant through a deal with NextEra $NEE Energy.

The administration is also onboard. President Donald Trump signed executive orders last May directing the government to have 10 new large reactors under construction by 2030, streamline licensing, and rebuild the domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. His stated goal is to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, from roughly 100 gigawatts to 300.

In Europe, surging energy prices linked to the Iran war have added pressure. E.U. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said this week that winding down nuclear was a "strategic mistake." France, which still sourced much of its enriched uranium from Russia last year, is pushing to standardize reactor designs across the continent.

The hype problem

Nuclear's association with AI has done something strange to its stock prices. Companies that haven't built a reactor, licensed a reactor, or signed a contract to sell power from a reactor are being valued as if they already have. 

Oklo, which has no reactor license and no binding power contracts, reached a market cap of roughly $26 billion. NuScale Power, a small modular reactor company not expected to turn a profit until 2030, saw its shares rise more than 150% in a year. Across the sector, companies generating zero revenue have collectively been valued at over $45 billion.

After going through years of regulatory process, TerraPower received a construction permit for its first sodium-cooled reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming and it still needs an operating license. The earliest it could be finished is 2030, and that assumes no delays for a first-of-its-kind design.

The most recent large conventional reactors built in the U.S., two plants in Georgia, finished seven years late and cost roughly $35 billion for the pair, more than double the original budget. Westinghouse, the nuclear reactor manufacturer that built them went through bankruptcy building them.

The federal program now betting $80 billion on a new round of Westinghouse reactors is counting on cost reductions from building the same design repeatedly. That has worked in other countries. It has not yet worked here.

Nuclear also has its own supply constraints that the valuations don't reflect. The U.S. has let its uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication capacity atrophy for decades and remains dependent on foreign sources, including Russia, for much of its fuel. Building out that infrastructure takes years, and many of the advanced reactor designs require specialized fuel that isn't produced at commercial scale in the U.S. yet.

The safety question

While the industry expands, the federal agency that oversees it is contracting. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses and inspects the country's nuclear plants, is proposing to cut its total inspection hours by 40%, with emergency preparedness inspections taking the steepest hit at 56%. 

Executive orders have also placed the previously independent agency under White House budget oversight, giving politicians influence over decisions that previously rested with technical experts.

The workforce picture is similarly strained. The skilled construction workers trained on the last major U.S. reactor builds have largely moved on to other sectors, and nuclear employers were already reporting serious hiring difficulties before the current expansion push, with 85% of nuclear construction employers saying in a 2024 survey that finding workers was either very or somewhat difficult. 

America's nuclear plants have operated for an average of 42 years without a major accident. That record was built before surging demand, an aging fleet, and a weakened regulator were all problems at once.

The lessons from the Fukushima disaster aren't only about what happens when reactors fail. It's about what happens when regulators stop functioning independently. Japanese courts later found that years of collusion between government overseers and the utility operating the plant left safety problems unaddressed until an earthquake and tsunami exposed them.