Is It Time For The Nuclear Option In The AI Race?

September 01, 2026 1:44 PM ET AI needs vast amounts of electricity, more than America can reliably deliver. That is becoming hard to miss as data centers spread across the country to feed the AI boom. The trouble is that America has not built enough dependable power for them, much less for the factories, defense production and mineral-processing projects politicians keep promising to bring home.Nuclear power should be an obvious part of the answer. It generates enormous quantities of electricity on a compact footprint, around the clock. It can power data centers, factories and defense production without blanketing the countryside with windmills, solar farms, batteries and miles of transmission lines.China is building while America dithers.Nine of the 10 nuclear reactors whose construction