On Wednesday, Amazon ( AMZN ), Meta Platforms ( META ), and Alphabet's Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ) pledged to triple global nuclear power supply by 2050, joining the World Nuclear Association's Large Energy Users Pledge.
From the annual CERAWeek Energy Conferenced hosted by S&P Global, Radiant Energy Group managing director Mark Nelson joins Market Domination hosts Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman to discusses the role of nuclear energy in meeting growing demand and how government support could help scale up nuclear capacity.
Also catch Yahoo Finance's interview with NextEra Energy ( NEE ) CEO John Ketchum, where he commented on the nuclear operator's role in meeting AI energy needs.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here .
I imagine you've been talking a lot about nuclear over the past few days because you're at Sarah Week, which is a big oil and gas and energy conference, Mark. Um, I think the questions remain around nuclear in terms of where that capacity is going to come from since nuclear is sort of notoriously expensive and takes a long time to get capacity up and running.
So the fourth nuclear plant you build of the same design doesn't take so long historically. What we're trying to figure out is who on earth needs four nuclear plants, or four reactors of the same design or eight reactors, depending on how much power we're talking about. That's enough power for 8 million people. What's different here is that before, the giant energy users didn't necessarily think nuclear was a solution, and this year at Sarah Week with the pledge to triple nuclear by 2050, we can see that we have millions of people's worth of AI center demand, and even just growing economies willing to bet that nuclear is the way forward if they join together and get the orders in bulk.
I'm curious, Mark, what role do you think the US government can, can and should play in this market? Um, in terms of regulation, Mark, and in terms of just generally encouraging nuclear expansion. How do you see sort of Uncle Sam's role here? What role can you play in in a positive way?
Well, most of what we've heard of so far has been about the role of getting out of the way. A lot of folks claim that they can make new, innovative, or smaller reactors if there's less regulation. We're seeing action in that area. What's less understood is that almost all reactors being built today, including almost all of them in China, almost all by Russia, uh, they're the large reactors that we already have licensed and already agree can be placed at existing nuclear plants. The role the government can play there is one of supporting the efforts to deploy at scale. It really is about getting the first ones in, and whether that ends up being some kind of loan guarantee, or the Department of Energy stepping in and saying, hey, up to this level, American people will back you to this much, if you pay us back later. That's the type of thing that historically has led us to make big nuclear investments. What's different this time is we haven't had both the government policy and the major demand from the world's biggest energy users at the same time.