- Momentum behind nuclear power in the data center industry is picking up steam as AI drives up energy demand
- Multiple companies are striking deployment agreements, power purchase deals and collaboration pacts
- Government backing for nuclear in the U.S. isn't hurting things either
It’s no secret that nuclear power has been gaining traction among cloud hyperscalers as they look for new ways to fuel expanding data center footprints. But, it seems the technology has moved beyond a fringe last resort power source and into the mainstream.
Just this week both Google and Equinix made near simultaneous nuclear power announcements.
The latter came out swinging with a slew of nuclear deals. In addition to a 2024 deal Equinix signed with Oklo for 500MW of power, the company has also signed on to buy 20 of Radiant’s microreactors, inked a letter of intent to buy 250MW of power from ULC-Energy for its data centers in the Netherlands, and struck a pre-order power agreement with Stellaria for 500MW of energy for its European data centers.
Google, meanwhile, detailed progress it is making with Kairos Power toward bringing 500MW of nuclear energy online by 2035. The pair are starting with an initial deployment of 50MW from a single reactor expected to come online in 2030, which will help fuel Google’s data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama.
Elsewhere, modular nuclear reactor startup Aalo this week announced it closed a $100 million Series B funding round. It plans to use the money to build its first nuclear power plant – which it is aiming to bring to zero-power criticality in the summer of 2026 – and a collocated experimental data center.
Aalo CEO Matt Loszak told Fierce that the company is seeing “tremendous momentum with data center customers and developers,” adding that it has “several major agreements” in place that it will announce in the future. He said Aalo expects “to provide commercial power to our first large-scale data center in 2029.”
It turns out it’s not just data center operators striking the deals. Liquid cooling vendor Vertiv signed on to collaborate with Oklo on integrated power and cooling systems. That is, the pair will be looking at how steam generated by Oklo’s reactors can be used to power Vertiv’s cooling systems.
US pilot nuclear reactor program
The rush of activity makes sense given data center operators across the board are on the hunt for any and all power sources to enable their much-needed expansions.
The U.S. government in particular has encouraged nuclear development via a series of executive orders from President Donald Trump, who last month urged data centers to pursue on-site power generation.
In response to the executive orders, the U.S. Department of Energy has taken a series of actions to facilitate new deployments. In April, it put out a request for information seeking feedback on efforts to make 16 federally-owned sites available for data center and nuclear development.
The DOE followed up in June with the launch of the Reactor Pilot Program, which is meant to expedite the testing of advanced reactor designs. Earlier this month, Aalo, Oklo and Radiant were named among 10 companies selected to work on 11 projects as part of the pilot program.
All labor no fruit?
Gartner's Bob Johnson told Fierce he's "encouraged" by all the recent activity in the nuclear arena, but noted announcements alone "really won't allow initial deployment of significant new nuclear capacity in the next few years."
"The basic problem still remains: a lengthy NRC permitting process (which won’t be addressed by the pilot program) and sufficient deployments of the new reactor technologies to start to bring the costs down," he said.
His conclusion? The recent announcement's won't necessarily accelerate nuclear deployments, but they are a good and necessary step in the right direction.
Update 8/20/2025 3:07 pm ET: This story was updated to include comments from Gartner analyst Bob Johnson.
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