The U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power To Fuel the Artificial Intelligence Boom
The Department of Energy also expects data centers' energy use to balloon. A December 2024 report forecasts that cloud computing will account for as much as 12 percent of the nation's annual energy use by 2028—up from 4.4 percent in 2023. Virginia, California, and Texas will each serve as a "primary hub" for both small- and large-scale cloud data centers, according to the Energy Department.
Texas is the fastest-growing consumer of electricity in the nation, according to the Energy Information Administration. In 2024, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)—which manages about 90 percent of the state's grid—said electricity demands could nearly double by 2030 as data centers and cryptocurrency grow and as oil operations in the Permian Basin begin to run on electricity instead of diesel. In March, ERCOT said it has received requests for 99 gigawatts (GW) of new connections—enough to power almost 25 million homes—from large power users (including data centers) in the past year. The state will need to add the energy equivalent of 30 nuclear power plants by 2030 to meet demand, reports Bloomberg.
Last Energy is preparing to deliver 30 such reactors—microreactors, that is. In February, the company announced plans to build 30 of its 20-megawatt reactors in Haskell County, Texas, to service data centers across the state. The site is conveniently located 200 miles west of Dallas, where data centers are expected to add 43 GW of demand to the grid through 2029.
The company has filed for a grid connection with ERCOT, which takes about 18–30 months to complete, according to the regulator. Last Energy is also in the process of applying for an Early Site Permit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Once obtained, the company will have a 10–20 year window to build its reactors.
This will be Last Energy's first operational project in the United States. Despite being an American company, Last Energy has focused on growing its business abroad because of stringent federal regulations. The developer sued the NRC in December 2024, challenging an agency rule requiring all nuclear power–producing entities—including those that do not generate enough electricity to turn on a lightbulb—to obtain an operating license from the commission before turning on.
Texas isn't the only state turning to nuclear power to meet its data center demand. In Virginia, where data centers could double the state's power demands by 2034, Amazon is partnering with Dominion Energy to develop three new nuclear energy projects. Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pennsylvania, is restarting to provide energy to Microsoft's data servers. The power plant was shut down in 2019.
These efforts will only be as cost-effective and efficient as regulations allow. But the renewed interest in clean and reliable nuclear power could allow the U.S. to make advancements in AI with minimal greenhouse gas emissions.
The post The U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power To Fuel the AI Boom appeared first on Reason.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Teradyne, Inc. (TER): A Bull Case Theory
We came across a bullish thesis on Teradyne, Inc. on Hunterbrook's Substack. In this article, we will summarize the bulls' thesis on TER. Teradyne, Inc.'s share was trading at $107.43 as of July 31st. TER's trailing and forward P/E were 37.31 and 32.15, respectively according to Yahoo Finance. Logistics robots filling packages in a warehouse, preparing for delivery. Hunterbrook Media, in collaboration with Citrini Research, reveals that Teradyne (TER) may be the hidden supplier behind Amazon's highly publicized new warehouse robot, Vulcan. Amazon claims Vulcan marks a major leap in automation, featuring a robotic arm with a 'sense of touch' capable of picking and stowing items at human-like speed. However, buried beneath the headlines is the fact that Vulcan's robotic limbs are actually built by Universal Robots, a Danish company acquired by Teradyne in 2015. Visual evidence from Amazon's own promotional materials clearly shows the Universal Robots logo and Robotiq grippers — accessories tailored specifically for Universal Robots' arms. As Amazon moves to automate 80% of its 14 billion hand-stowed items annually, this could translate to a ~$400 million opportunity for Teradyne's robotics division, which currently accounts for just 10–15% of company revenues. The implications extend beyond Amazon, as the Vulcan's capabilities showcase the progress made by combining AI and robotics. Innovations like vision-language-action models and Nvidia's Isaac Sim — integrated directly into Teradyne's robots — are enabling robots to reason spatially and act with precision in complex environments. Nvidia claims these integrations are 50–80x faster than legacy systems, potentially setting a new standard in industrial automation. Despite slumping shares tied to a cyclical downturn in Teradyne's core semiconductor testing business, this Amazon collaboration signals a pivotal moment. With no recent insider stock sales for the first time since 2018, and earnings around the corner, Teradyne may be on the brink of a robotics-driven revaluation. Previously we covered a bullish thesis on Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) by The Antifragile Investor in May 2025, which highlighted its role in chipmaking, strong service margins, and high switching costs. The company's stock price has appreciated approximately 14.55% since our coverage. This is because the thesis played out as expected. Hunterbrook shares a similar view in its thesis on Teradyne (TER) but emphasizes robotics-led upside. Teradyne, Inc. is not on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 49 hedge fund portfolios held TER at the end of the first quarter which was 61 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of TER as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock. Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Los Angeles Times
14 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers, from Laos to Brazil. And there were no real winners
WASHINGTON — President Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers — from small, poor countries such as Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners such as Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty export taxes — tariffs — on the products they export to the U.S. starting Thursday. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that succumbed to Trump's demands — and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run — even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. 'In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. 'The biggest winner is Trump,' said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. 'He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded — dramatically.'' Everything goes back to what Trump calls 'Liberation Day'' — April 2 — when the president announced 'reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% 'baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs — all of which is now being challenged in court. Trump retreated temporarily after April announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually some of them did, acceding to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs to maintain their ability to sell to the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States — up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the U.K. for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low-single-digit rates they paid last year, but lower than the tariffs he was threatening — 30% on the EU and 25% on Japan. Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while the Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt by a U.S. ally that China claims as its territory. 'Twenty percent from the beginning has not been our goal. We hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,' Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei on Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Countries that didn't knuckle under — and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath — got hit harder. Even some of the poor were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 — versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a close Trump ally who is facing trial for trying to overturn his electoral loss and inspiring a riot in the capital in 2023 — recalling Trump's role in the Jan. 6. insurrection two years earlier at the U.S. Capitol. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on long-standing U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state in light of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax — even higher than the 31% Trump announced on April 2. 'The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 'They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his April 2 tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wends its way through the legal system, and may end up at the Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. 'If [the tariffs] get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who typically pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits — or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker have all raised prices due to U.S. tariffs. 'This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,' Appleton said. 'Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. 'The U.S. consumer's a big loser,″ Wolff said. Wiseman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
UPI
15 minutes ago
- UPI
OpenAI ends ChatGPT users' option to index chats on search engines
ChatGPT developer OpenAI is ending an experiment that enabled users to index and share their private conversations with the artificial intelligence program. File Photo by Wu Hao/EPA-EFE Aug. 2 (UPI) -- OpenAI is ending the option to have Google and other search engines index user chats with ChatGPT and make the content of those chats discoverable on searches. Google accounts for more than 89% of all online searches, which made private chats on ChatGPT potentially widely accessible when indexed on that search engine and others. "This feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn't intend to, so we're removing the option," Dan Stuckey, OpenAI chief information security officer, told PC Mag. Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines will continue to index discoverable chats, but only for a while longer. "We're also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines," Stuckey said. OpenAI recently enabled the index option for private ChatGPT discussions as an experiment, Stuckey added, but that experiment is ending. A message informed users their indexed chats were searchable on Google and other search engines, but many users did not read the message or don't understand the extent to which their conversations might be available to others. Such conversations are accessible when affixing "site:chatgpt/share" to search queries when those conversations are indexed. News of the indexed private conversations with ChatGPT first was reported by FastCompany on Wednesday in a story detailing Google's indexing of ChatGPT conversations. The indexing does not provide information on respective users, but the conversations might include personal information when mentioned by the users while conversing with ChatGPT. Many users also were unaware that sharing a conversation with someone via social apps, such as WhatsApp, when saving the URL for future use would cause Google to make it potentially widely available to millions of people. OpenAI officials recently announced they were appealing a court order requiring the preservation of all chats that users delete after conversing with ChatGPT, Ars Technica reported.
