The US Government will invest at least $80 billion in the construction of new conventional nuclear reactors within the framework of a partnership announced on Tuesday with the US group Westinghouse Electric Company.
This is a major new step in the US nuclear rally, initiated in part by tech giants with growing electricity needs to power their data centers, particularly for artificial intelligence (AI). The agreement is an extension of a decree adopted at the end of May by Donald Trump and titled “revitalization of the nuclear industrial park”, in which the US president set the goal of having ten conventional reactors under construction by 2030.
The United States has not begun construction of a new nuclear power plant since 2009 and has neglected this energy source for more than a decade, due in particular to its degraded image among the general public and the financial failure of several projects. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a disturbance in the balance of the energy market, encouraging states to diversify their supplies.
Added to this is the acceleration of electricity consumption in the United States driven by the rise of data centers with the revolution of remote computing (cloud) and AI.
Three Mile Island accident
In late June, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced that she had begun a new power plant project, just four years after the closure of the Indian Point site, considered too close to New York. Since the serious incident at the Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania, which nearly caused a reactor vessel to rupture and radioactive contamination of an entire region in March 1979, only one permit has been granted in the United States. These were Units 3 and 4 in Vogtle, Georgia. Unit 3 was commissioned in July 2023 and Unit 4 in April 2024.
Westinghouse Electric Company is a subsidiary of the historic energy company Westinghouse Electric Corporation, founded in 1886 in Pittsburgh (northeast). It declared bankruptcy in 2017 before being bought in 2018 by investment company Brookfield Corporation, which is the majority shareholder, while Canadian uranium giant Cameco has a minority stake.
Source: BFM TV
