AI’s power demands are vast and growing. The Trump administration wants nuclear reactors to meet them. Whether that’s achievable, and whether communities will accept it, is another matter.
Not in my back yard! Residents of Davis, West Virginia, at a meeting regarding an air quality permit application for a nearby gas-fired power plant, 30 June 2025 Ulysse Bellier · AFP · Getty
We passed cranes, vacant lots and one data centre after another, many still under construction. ‘Check that one out, it’s really huge!’ said Ann Bennett, an activist with the environmental organisation Sierra Club, as she drove us through Virginia’s Loudoun and Fairfax counties close to Washington DC. She was critical of this building explosion. ‘That right there’s the cloud. Just look at it, it’s hard to describe.’
She was right. The landscape is dystopian: behind newly erected powerlines, vast windowless buildings in grey, cream or blue line the straight roads. Over and over we passed huge electrical transformers and building sites. It was only June but temperatures were already soaring above 35ºC. Residents of Virginia’s affluent cities were speeding along ‘Data Center Alley’ in big, air-conditioned cars, heading for their offices in DC or the nearby airport.
Virginia has become the world’s leading data centre hub due to its proximity to the US capital, affordable land, tax incentives, abundant electricity and access to undersea cables that connect North America to Europe. The state is home to hundreds of these centres, with a total installed capacity of 6.2 gigawatts (GW) in the first half of 2025. Virginia’s electricity generation capacity is 29GW, almost half of which comes from gas-fired power plants.
‘What we want to do is we want to keep it [AI] in this country,’ Donald Trump declared in January 2025 as he announced the launch of Stargate, a $500bn private investment project that plans to fund a network of new data centres across the US. ‘China is a competitor and others are competitors.’ Trump acknowledged that these centres would need ‘a lot of electricity’, and suggested combining data centres with energy generation: ‘We’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their own plants if they want.’ The fossil fuel industry, which gave significant financial funding to Trump’s campaign, has sensed an (…)
Swirl_On_Top on January 8th, 2026 at 14:26 UTC »
In case anyone missed it, DJT Media group announced a pending merger with a nuclear power company a few weeks back.
But Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm....
Edit: not saying Nuclear power is bad, I'm all for it. But the blatant conflict of interest and awfully convenient timing.... is worth calling out.
unlock0 on January 8th, 2026 at 14:18 UTC »
We need this but I want to throw out some perspective.
I’ve done some work in nuclear plants and they’re insane compared to normal coal or natural gas generation. It’s not just the reactor, it is the facility. The plant doubles as a fortress. Tank trenches/concrete moats and barriers, the internal layout has kill boxes and defendable hallways with gun slits, there were painted lines on the floor and contractors couldn’t deviate from their approved colors. Every bolt is numbered. Everything that enters the facility is Xrayed and catalogued. The guards had to always carry rifles. They had better security than any military facility I’ve been in, and I was in the military and deployed twice.
We need thorium or something else that will reduce all of these second order requirements so these plants can be built reasonably.
CMDR_omnicognate on January 8th, 2026 at 14:10 UTC »
I mean, i'd be happy if the current administration weren't the ones in charge of this... the level of corruption and ineptitude could be devastating