A group of large-scale energy users including Amazon, Meta, and Google has thrown its weight behind efforts to ramp up global nuclear capacity – aiming to triple it by 2050 – to meet increasing energy demands.
The cross-industry collective has signed a pledge [PDF] supporting the goal of at least tripling nuclear capacity around the world by 2050. Other signatories include 14 major global banks and financial institutions, plus energy companies like Occidental and heavy industry conglomerates such as Japan's IHI Corporation.
Prompted by the World Nuclear Association [PDF], this call is said to be the first time that businesses beyond the nuclear sector have publicly backed a large-scale expansion of atomic power to meet their own predicted energy needs.
Nuclear energy currently generates 9 percent of the world's electricity from a total of 439 reactors.
The pledge recognizes that energy demand in many industries is expected to increase significantly in the coming years, despite ongoing efficiency and optimization efforts.
As The Register has covered before, the datacenter industry is one example where power consumption has been rising rapidly, driven by the booming interest in AI training, although other trends such as electric vehicles and the electrification of industries like steel foundries are also adding to the burden.
Goldman Sachs recently forecast that energy use in the datacenter sector is likely to more than double by the end of the decade, while a separate analysis warned that Americans could face a 70 percent hike in their electricity bills by the same time, unless action is taken to boost capacity.
Large-scale users depend on a stable and abundant energy supply for their business operations, and the pledge notes that nuclear is able to provide round the clock power independently of the weather, season, or geographical location.
It states that a resilient economic growth strategy should include increasing the proportion of electricity generated by nuclear power, and calls on governments to enable atom-powered capacity deployment by ensuring that nuclear fission and other energy sources have equal access to finance.
"The aim is aligning governments, financial institutions, and industrial users behind this goal to triple nuclear capacity," a spokesperson for the World Nuclear Association told us.
"The pledge is very high level, but we are working with industry and these sectors to overcome the challenges in financing (e.g. getting World Bank to recognize and provide borrowing to nuclear projects), supply chain (mobilizing workforce and construction), and regulation (harmonization between national regulators) to realize the ambition," the spokesperson said, adding that public support is also key to providing certainty for these long-term decisions.
But the problem with nuclear is precisely that it is a long-term solution. Some of the IT industry giants including Google and Amazon have already been investing in technology such as small modular reactors (SMRs) to either feed to the grid or power their datacenters directly, but these are not expected to come online until after 2030.
The World Nuclear Association acknowledges that an atomic plant typically takes at least five years to construct, whereas natural gas plants are often built in about two years.
It could take even longer. Construction started on the UK's Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in 2017, but is not expected to be operational before 2030.
And all this ignores the fact that nuclear power is controversial, due to the risks posed by radiation from incidents such as the Chernobyl disaster in present-day Ukraine, and the challenge of managing nuclear waste, including spent fuel, which could pose a long-term hazard.
In the near term, energy needs will likely be met through a mix of renewables and existing fossil-fuel-powered generation facilities.
Last year, Schneider Electric advised datacenter operators that any shortfall in grid supplies might have to be addressed with on-site gas-powered turbines, or on-site solar and wind generation with battery stabilization, with solid oxide fuel cells as another option. ®