US signs US$80 bil pact to boost nuclear power in AI drive.
The US government agreed to an US$80 billion (RM336.08 billion) deal with Westinghouse Electric Co to build large-scale nuclear reactors, the latest push to meet rising demand for electricity from artificial intelligence.
The strategic partnership — which also involves Brookfield Asset Management and Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp — aims to deliver on US President Donald Trump’s AI ambitions and scale up an industry he sees as vital to competing with China. The companies said Tuesday (Oct 28) the initiative will create tens of thousands of jobs across the country.
Cameco shares rose as much as 17% in pre-market trading in New Y
Power consumption from US data centres is expected to double by 2035, reaching almost 9% of total demand, according to BloombergNEF. The surge has triggered a rush to build new power stations and secure grid connections. Yet nuclear projects take years to complete, prompting some companies, like Google, to seek power from reopened reactors to meet near-term needs.
Many hopes for a nuclear renaissance in the US are focused on developing small modular reactors but the Westinghouse pact is for large-scale reactors and chimes with an announcement by power developer Fermi Inc to begin production of four big reactors that would be used for a private data centre grid campus in the Texas Panhandle.
The agreement comes against the backdrop of a sluggish US nuclear buildout: only three reactors have been completed this century.
Each two-unit Westinghouse AP1000 site creates or sustains 45,000 manufacturing and engineering jobs in 43 states, and a national deployment will create more than 100,000 construction jobs, the companies said. There are six AP1000 reactors in operation and the technology has been selected for programmes in Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
Source: Theedgemalaysia
