An artificial intelligence-induced energy consumption boom from data centres is causing new debate over the future of nuclear power, as the world marks 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster.
In recent weeks, proponents of nuclear energy in the US have described an increasingly amiable public attitude towards atomic reactors, after decades of caution.
In 1986, the Chernobyl reactor in what was then the Soviet Union melted down and exploded, killing about 30 people immediately and in the days after, as well as thousands of subsequent deaths from cancer.
But stigma was attached to nuclear reactors even before the Chernobyl disaster, since the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Pennsylvania in 1979.
Time has chipped away at some of the fears rooted in those disasters and a surge in energy bills caused in part by AI is renewing interest in nuclear power.
“We've just got to bring common sense back to electricity,” said US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told last month's Semafor World Economy summit in Washington.
Mr Wright was asked about the White House push to build more nuclear reactors and how the proliferation of energy-hungry data centres was playing out in tandem. “This desire for more electricity generation, I think, is actually a tailwind for nuclear,” he said.
Constellation Energy's chief executive Joseph Dominguez agreed, and said: “Nuclear is actually quite popular now, more popular than any 30 years I've been in this business.”
Mr Wright and Mr Dominguez have long supported nuclear energy – Constellation Energy has nuclear reactors in its portfolio – but recent surveys show a general rise in support.
A Gallup poll last month found 46 per cent of US residents “support a greater emphasis” on nuclear power, the highest such proportion in 13 years.
It comes with caveats, however: the polling and analytics firm pointed out 53 per cent of those surveyed largely oppose the construction of nuclear reactors in their area.
“Americans’ preference for emphasising solar and wind power, while still commanding majority support, has fallen, while nuclear energy has seen its support rise,” Gallup's analysis read.
Expanding AI and data centres potentially put a squeeze on energy grids, testing how people truly feel about nuclear power even regardless of political affiliation.
The summary also points out that the latest numbers indicate that amid a polarised political landscape, support for nuclear energy among Democrats and Republicans “is the narrowest of any energy source in the survey”.
But there are still plenty of critics who say that once residents factor in all the pieces of information, they oppose what some have called a nuclear renaissance in the US.
One of those critics is Eric Epstein, who lives near the site of the TMI Unit 2 reactor that suffered a partial meltdown. “We were told a nuclear accident was as likely as a meteor falling from the sky,” Mr Epstein told The National.
He is the director of Three Mile Island Alert, a grass roots energy safety organisation founded in 1977 that has kept a critical eye on the nuclear industry.
The group has backed efforts by Constellation Energy and Microsoft to restart Three Mile Island's Unit 1 nuclear reactor, which did not experience a meltdown and remained operational until 2019.
Aside from safety concerns about restarting a “zombie reactor”, Mr Epstein said Constellation Energy received a $1 billion loan from US Department of Energy to try to bring TMI Unit 1 back online.
“Nuclear energy is an economic fiction that socialises risk and privatises profit,” he said, suggesting Constellation Energy and similar energy companies thrive on an economic system built on bailouts and subsidies.
“Constellation’s hubris is matched only by their cynicism, and anyone can be over confident when you have billions of other peoples’ money in your back pocket.”
Mr Epstein said Constellation essentially shut down TMI-1 back in 2019 because it was losing money. “The free market killed the plant,” he said.
Last week, Mr Epstein and TMI Alert filed a “petition to intervene” to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is currently monitoring Constellation Energy's efforts to restart the reactor.
“There have been no off-site emergency plans or radiation monitors in place since 2019,” the lengthy petition reads. It adds that “the NRC and Constellation lack a historic perspective of emergency planning at Three Mile Island”.
Earlier this year, Neil Chatterjee, who served on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during President Donald Trump's first term, also expressed scepticism of TMI's reboot.
“It will never work,” he wrote for The Hill. “A fully shutdown nuclear plant has never been restarted in America for good reason: there are too many regulatory, material and logistical hurdles to overcome.”
Mr Chatterjee also mentioned that the reactor vessel inside TMI1 “could be brittle and fatigued” and that restarting a nuclear reactor is not the same as simply switching it back on “like a light bulb”.
The NRC, meanwhile, has insisted it is closely reviewing Constellation’s request to reactivate TMI1, and that safety regulations and protocols remain paramount amid the lengthy approval process.
Constellation Energy has also changed the name of TMI1 to Crane Clean Energy Centre in the hope of turning the page in the minds of the public.
That said, the restart of TMI1 is hardly a done deal, even if polling indicates more support for nuclear energy.
