Westinghouse Lays Groundwork to Build 10 New Nuclear Reactors

The US energy industry’s long nuclear winter may finally be giving way to spring. 

None other than Westinghouse, the firm responsible for the only two nuclear reactors built in the US in the past three decades, is among those leading the charge. The company has announced plans to begin construction on 10 reactors in the US by 2030. Hopefully, Westinghouse has learned some lessons from its previous projects.

Wishin’ We Were Fission

Westinghouse has changed hands a bit since completing its last nuclear reactors, both at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. That’s because the Georgia project proved something of a disaster. Not “Three Mile Island” disastrous, mind you, but some seven years and $18 billion over budget. That proved enough to tip the company into bankruptcy in 2017. It re-emerged the following year and was acquired in 2023 by Brookfield Asset Management and Canadian uranium mining company Cameco.

This time around, the company is following the lead of the White House, which hopes that a series of executive orders issued earlier this year will kickstart a nuclear rebound. The extra gigawatts would come in handy as extreme weather stresses the US energy grid; on Wednesday, heat advisories issued across the eastern US prompted an emergency alert from major grid operator IJM Interconnection. Worsening the country’s energy woes are the massive and power-hungry data centers — especially those powering artificial intelligence — that are increasingly coming online.

Fittingly, one of the tech titans building those data centers is helping Westinghouse turn its nuclear dreams into reality, possibly on time and on budget:

• On Tuesday, Westinghouse announced that it would team with Google, using the tech company’s AI tools to turn the construction of its AP1000 reactors into an “efficient, repeatable process.”
• Each of those 10 reactors can generate enough electricity to power more than 750,000 homes, creating as much as $75 billion in economic value across the country, interim Westinghouse CEO Dan Sumner said on Tuesday.

Alphabet Soup: Helping out Westinghouse is just one part of Google’s plans to support the energy demands of its growing AI ambitions. On Tuesday, the company also announced that it would invest $25 billion in data-center and AI infrastructure, including plans to upgrade two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania. Microsoft, too, is getting in on the action, announcing Wednesday a partnership with the Idaho National Laboratory to use its AI tools to speed up licensing and permitting of nuclear projects. The challenge will be not using too much AI while trying to make sure the grid gets upgraded so they can use more AI.