China AI startup rattles US new nukes plan

January 30, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/china-ai-startup-rattles-us-new-nuke-plan/

Innovative computer modelling with AI doesn’t need the most expensive and dangerous energy from nukes

The much touted second-coming of a “nuclear renaissance” in the United States fueled by the projected soaring global demand to power artificial intelligence (AI) just got a major setback with the surprise January 20, 2025 overnight emergence of an apparently more competitive and efficient Chinese AI startup company, DeepSeek. The US stock market plummeted for the S&P 500 nuclear power companies that have been financially scaling up as the most reliable 24/7 electricity supply for a massive expansion of energy intensive data centers. China’s surprise rollout of DeepSeek and sudden rise to international acclaim at the start of 2025 has seriously disrupted the US claim to global dominance in cloud computing, networking and data storage services powered by extravagantly expensive atomic energy.

US-based AI technology firms, including Nvidia, which lost nearly $600 billion in the January 27th record breaking single day’s largest stock selloff, have led the way in rebranding nuclear power as the preferred choice as the 24/7 power supplier for a massive AI surge. The sudden emergence of DeepSeek, only two months in the making, is being compared to a “sputnik moment” for the US AI market, referencing the former Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite into orbit in 1959 that triggered a US technological panic and launched America into a “space race” with Russia. DeepSeek has just as suddenly now laid claim to competitively take the technological lead to advance mere computer modelling to an innovative era of computer reasoning.

Starting in 2023 and swelling in 2024, there was sort of a “gold rush” of fast money that sprang up to finance AI deals with new reactor licensing and construction of still unproven Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs as well as repowering uneconomical, permanently closed reactors like Three Mile Island Unit 1. The Big Tech corporate promotion was primarily driven by the leading hyperscalers including Google, Amazon, MicroSoft, Meta Platforms (aka Facebook) and Oracle. A series of deals have since been cut with the established S&P 500 nuclear corporations led by Constellation Energy, Vistra, and the usual suspects of nuclear start-ups including Oklo Power, NuScale, Talen Energy Corp and TerraPower.

However, like a bolt from the blue, the US nuclear industry has been rattled on the stock market. The S&P 500 nuclear power giants Constellation Energy (CEG) and Vistra (VST) are under scrutiny as international energy analysts reevaluate the energy needs of AI data centers along with that same host of nuclear power start-ups.