Artificial intelligence is reviving the nuclear option.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino.

The thing about the AI boom, it needs a lot of electricity, like 160% increase in electricity

by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs.

It's got big tech fired up about an option that's never really been the cool kid of the

clean energy class.

Nuclear. Microsoft made a deal to restart the Three Mile Island plant.

Google and Amazon are investing in new types of reactors.

It's something of a nuclear revival for the U.S. after decades of stagnation.

According to Anna Erickson, professor of nuclear and radiological engineering

at Georgia Institute of Technology. Nuclear power provides about 20% of total electricity in the United States.

And if you put it in numbers, it's about 100 gigawatt. Is it a lot?

Is it not a lot?

What I can tell you right now is a lot of that is going to be consumed by other applications

such as data centers as well as the surge in electric vehicles.

So we expect a significant increase in U.S. nuclear capacity and the needs

for power. But what's interesting is nuclear provides about half of the carbon-free power generation,

and that's a number I'd like to bring up in addition to the 20%.

Why did nuclear power sort of stagnate after coming online?

Well, it's true that in the past two decades, we have not seen increase in nuclear power.

In fact, until just a couple of years ago, we've seen nuclear power plants being shut down, sometimes due to

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