I'm John Batcher, visiting with Henry Sikolsky, the Executive Director of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center.

There's a new idea in big tech, which is own your own nuclear reactor for guaranteeing the energy source you'll need going into the future for your server farms, your data centers, everything artificial intelligence demands.

The trend is for something called a small modular reactor.

One or more of these companies is associated with Mr. Gates, formerly of Microsoft, now independent,

a company called Terra Power, I believe.

And there are headlines in Reuters suggesting Terra Power is not just for the United States

and big tech, for example, at the end of last month, Terra Power has had informal talks with countries

including Turkey.

Henry, what is a small modular reactor as pitched by Mr. Gates?

Well, Mr. Gates and a firm called Oclo have a peculiar form of small modular reactor.

They use an obscure adjective, they call it advanced small modular reactor.

And what are these?

They're fast reactors, which were the kinds of reactors we abandoned because of various accidents

and difficulties in making them economic.

They're going to somehow reverse the march of history

and make them economic and make them safe.

The problem with these amongst a number of technical safety issues

is that they are ideal for making not just weapons usable or weapons grade,

but super weapons grade, plutonia.

Now, they're trying to get around that for the moment.

None of these machines have been licensed,

which means people who talk about plugging them in are really talking in aspirational terms.

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