Brief: Tech Giants vs. the US' Nuclear Track Record

Mobius Intel Brief:

Yesterday, Meta added its name to a growing list of tech giants seeking to rapidly expand nuclear generation capacity to supply AI and hyperscale data centers with reliable, steady-state power as early as 2030 — a timeline complicated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) track record in the pre-Department of Government Efficiency era.

Key Intel:

Ambitious timelines for new operational nuclear capacity face two notable hurdles — an undeveloped domestic nuclear fuel supply chain and a burdensome regulatory process under the modern NRC.

Analyzing historical nuclear reactor construction speeds by country shows the U.S. underperforms nearly all developed nations.

• The U.S. ranks 21st out of the top 25 countries by median reactor construction speed and 25th by average construction speed for all units constructed since 1951.

For reactors constructed after 1990, the US ranks 10th out of 11 qualifying countries with a median timeline of 10 years from construction start to first grid connection.

Over the same post-1990 period, the U.S. ranks 7th out of 11 qualifying countries for capacity added per year of construction.

• The U.S. constructs approximately 125 MW of generation capacity per build-year vs. #1-ranked Japan’s 337 MW of capacity per build-year.

While President-elect Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory commission aims to eliminate unnecessary regulations, rapid deregulation enters murky waters for higher-risk nuclear technology.

However, without substantial investment in domestic nuclear fuel supply chains and streamlined regulatory pipelines, emerging large load consumers will likely be forced to pivot to existing generation supplies with similar reliability attributes as nuclear — making natural gas the primary backstop resource for steady-state demand growth over the next decade.

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