Goldman Sachs estimates that data center electricity demand will grow by 160% by 2030. That single figure explains everything: why Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are striking deals with nuclear reactor developers, why small modular reactors — SMRs — have become the technology sector’s most coveted energy asset, and why nuclear power is reclaiming a central role in the global energy debate after years on the margins.
Data centers are relentless energy consumers. They never switch off at night, cannot tolerate blackouts, and cannot depend on sources that fluctuate with wind or sunlight. This is precisely why SMRs are such a natural fit: compact reactors, partly factory-built, designed to deliver steady power anywhere they are deployed. Texas-based startup Aalo Atomics is developing modular reactors engineered to operate directly adjacent to large energy users — the exact model that AI infrastructure demands. Its CEO has spoken of “tens of gigawatts in the next five years,” a scale that has no precedent in the history of distributed energy.
Big tech has already moved decisively. Meta has signed twenty-year power purchase agreements with three nuclear plants operated by a single provider, and has joined an SMR development project alongside Oklo and TerraPower. Google and Kairos Power plan to connect an advanced nuclear reactor to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s grid. Meanwhile, every major hyperscaler is building relationships with multiple nuclear developers, spreading risk and multiplying its bets. By 2026, these agreements are taking concrete shape — they are no longer exploratory announcements.
The geography of civilian nuclear power is being redrawn around this demand. China has approved 10 new generating units representing roughly $27 billion in investment, and its Linglong One reactor — the world’s first onshore commercial SMR — is expected to come online in the first half of 2026. The United States is betting on plant restarts and new modular projects. In Europe, the SMR Industrial Alliance — which includes nine selected projects, among them newcleo — projects installed capacity of between 17 and 53 GW by 2050. The question is no longer whether nuclear will grow again, but how fast.
There is also a compelling economic logic alongside the energy case. Serial production of identical SMR units drives down costs: developers broadly agree that reaching 6 to 10 units of the same design can cut costs by up to 40% compared to the first-of-a-kind build. The learning curve has already been demonstrated in naval reactor programmes. Applying it to civilian power generation is the step the industry is now taking, pushed by demand from a sector — data centers — with the financial firepower to fund entire reactor fleets, not just individual plants.
If the current trajectory holds, nuclear will return as a meaningful baseload source in the world’s major markets before the end of the decade. Not for ideological reasons, but for arithmetic ones: the demand for continuous, low-carbon electricity already exceeds what existing grids can reliably provide. Data centers need power that never goes down. Nuclear energy, in its new modular forms, is today the most concrete answer to that need.
