Author: BITWU.ETH
Recently, following Professor Chen Xiaodong's course "Social Impact of Disruptive Technologies" at NTU, I have re-understood nuclear energy.
I used to think that nuclear energy is a typical "national-level project": huge investment, long cycles, complex approvals, making it difficult for ordinary enterprises and capital to truly participate.
But the emergence of AI data centers may be changing this logic.
The biggest change is not that nuclear technology has suddenly matured, but that nuclear energy has for the first time encountered commercial buyers that are both powerful enough and urgent enough.
In the past, nuclear power mainly addressed national energy security issues; now, AI companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are also actively seeking energy solutions that can provide long-term, stable, and low-carbon electricity.
Thus, several changes are happening simultaneously:
Large-scale nuclear power remains national infrastructure; small modular reactors are beginning to enter commercial validation, better suited to the electricity scale of data centers, industrial parks, and high-energy-consuming enterprises.
At the same time, improvements in passive safety technology, modular manufacturing, and regulatory efficiency are also attempting to gradually transform nuclear energy from a "one-time super project" into a replicable industrial product.
The value of nuclear energy is not limited to electricity generation.
Heating, industrial steam, hydrogen production, seawater desalination, and even stable energy supply for high-energy-consuming manufacturing could become new commercial scenarios.
Behind this, it is not just the nuclear power plant itself, but also the entire supply chain including fuel, forgings, instrumentation and control, and high-temperature superconducting magnets.
Of course, nuclear energy is not without risks.
Construction cycles, cost overruns, nuclear waste, fuel supply, regulation, and project financing—any issue in any of these areas could turn a long-term asset into a stranded asset; fusion still needs time to become truly commercial.
So my current assessment of nuclear energy is:
AI has not made nuclear energy mature overnight, but it is providing nuclear energy with commercial demand, capital support, and real orders that it has never had before.
In the next decade, nuclear energy may not be the sexiest narrative in the AI industry, but it could become one of the most underestimated infrastructures.
