October 2, 2024 – We recently re-aired an interview with uranium and nuclear analyst Mart Wolbert from earlier this year, where he discussed the behind-the-scenes efforts by major tech companies to embrace nuclear power. In recent weeks, this has been confirmed as Microsoft and several other tech CEOs have publicly supported nuclear expansion, along with significant investments amounting to billions of dollars. This is a significant development. Today, we caught up with Mart for another in-depth discussion on these recent trends, including the substantial energy and raw materials—like steel, concrete, copper, and silver—needed for these massive data centers. We also explore how the U.S. currently leads the world in data center construction, while the global data center race of the 21st century is expanding, with Europe, China, and various regions across the Asia-Pacific striving to catch up amid the ongoing AI boom.
Follow more of Mart's work and reports at Contrarian Codex on Patreon or on Twitter @Yellowbull11
Mentioned in today's show:
- Advanced Nuclear - Pathways to Commercial Liftoff (energy.gov)
- China Will Generate More Nuclear Power Than Both France and the United States by 2030 – The Diplomat
- AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand | Goldman Sachs
- OpenAI asked US to approve energy-guzzling 5GW data centers, report says - Ars Technica
- Microsoft goes nuclear for its energy-hungry data centers as it bets on infamous Three Mile Island station power for its AI ambitions (msn.com)
- Google CEO: We're working on 1GW data centers, seeing money going into SMRs - DCD (datacenterdynamics.com)
- Oracle designing data center that would be powered by 3 small nuclear reactors (cnbc.com)
- Nvidia CEO Backs Nuclear Energy to Power AI Data Centers Amid Growing Energy Demands - Techopedia
- Michigan nuclear plant finalizes federal loan for first U.S. reactor restart (cnbc.com)
- Japan’s New Economy Minister Seeks to Maximize Nuclear Restarts - Bloomberg
