Nuclear is the Answer to the Growing Demands on the Digital Grid, Some Say

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2025 – U.S. energy consumption, fueled by the need to power the data centers behind the AI revolution, will require increased reliance on nuclear energy starting next decade.

“Nuclear will be a major provider of that electricity in the 2030s,” said Carol Lane, Vice President of Government Affairs at X-energy, a company that designs advanced nuclear reactors and fuel, at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit here today.

Lane’s fellow panelist, Alan Poole, General Counsel for DC BLOX,  a company that provides connected AI-ready data centers for digital business, described AI as rapidly expanding the need for power, creating a “space race” for alternative energy sources.

“Power is of paramount importance because of the amount that modern AI-ready data centers will require,” Poole said.

Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding increases the number of places where data centers are viable. However, Poole said data centers, most of which rely on fiber, also require water, limiting the locations of data centers to places with that natural resource.

Lane said that investing in nuclear energy is the solution to support the rapidly growing digital grid. 

“With the growth that we’re looking at the rest of this decade into the 2030s, we obviously have a huge demand for energy. We’re gonna need all kinds of power to make that happen, but particularly with the growth in data centers and AI and their locations and how they use the electricity,” Lane said.

Lane acknowledged the difficulties that have previously made wide-scale use of nuclear energy impossible in the past, and she elaborated how X-energy has been developing small modular reactors that offer more flexibility and reliability, making nuclear energy a more practical option.