Google And Nvidia Join The Nuclear Bandwagon

Another of the world’s biggest tech brands is stepping into the nuclear power market to feed its growing artificial intelligence assets. 

That’s was the news yesterday morning from Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google (GOOG). 

In an interview with Bloomberg, Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Google, commented:

“Working with our utility partners and the generators to come together to figure out how we can bring these new technologies — nuclear may be one of them — to the grid.”

Though guarded, this position should come as no surprise that the world’s 4th largest tech company is now joining the third largest, Microsoft (MSFT) and the fifth largest, Amazon (AMZN), in venturing into this corner of the energy market to power their next big industrial pivot. 

And just last week, the #2 most powerful tech brand in the world, Nvidia (NVDA), made similar indications when Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang dropped this comment in his own interview with Bloomberg: 

“Nuclear is wonderful as one of the sources of energy, one of the sources of sustainable energy.” 

Over $10 Trillion In Tech Market Cap Is Already Behind The New Nuclear Golden Age

It’s a pattern, and it’s one that’s likely soon to repeat itself with the rest of the top ten most powerful technology corporations in the world. 

Energy, you see, is the limiting factor when it comes to the evolution of artificial intelligence, and this isn’t just me saying it.

The word Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of the world’s 6th largest tech company, Meta Platforms (META), used in an interview last April was ‘bottleneck’.

And it’s a major issue for all parties concerned, because without a substantial and rapid enhancement in our national power generation capacity, AI simply will not have the processing horsepower it needs to supply things like next generation search engines and image and video creation functionality to the average consumer. 

I know it may sound like a lot of whining over nothing, but the rule of “if you’re not growing, you’re dying” applies in the tech sector perhaps more than anywhere else. 

So if one corporation manages to get an edge by nailing down gigawatts of dedicated power generation — the way Microsoft did when it contracted with Constellation Energy to be the sole client of the soon-to-be reactivated reactor at Three Mile Island — it’s a signal to the rest of the field that they need to do the same. 

Bill Gates Just Bought Three Mile Island… Should You Be Concerned?

And thus, a new golden era in nuclear power is kicked off. 

There is one hitch, however, that could hinder all of these efforts.

While the demand for nuclear may be skyrocketing to all-time highs, the supply of nuclear fuel is at all time lows. 

The chart below paints a decent picture of just how bad things are, but not a complete one. 

To get a complete understanding of just how dire we’ve let the situation become, we need some real world context.

Luckily I’ve got just the thing.

Our national uranium fuel production is in such a desperate state, that as much as a quarter of our national supply — a supply which powers not just civilian reactors, but also military reactors including those that drive our biggest, most expensive naval vessels — was coming from non other than Russia and its satellite states up until this past spring.

Take a moment to digest that… One of our biggest, most important suppliers of Uranium is the same country we’ve spent $100B trying to help defeat on the battlefields of central Europe for the last 31 months. 

Well, if you think that’s a bit out of whack, it gets worse. 

Yes, We’re Still Buying Uranium From The Kremlin

Though the Biden administration put an end to all uranium imports from Russia earlier this year, he did allow a single exception to this rule. 

One company, based just outside of Washington DC, is still allowed to import Russian uranium.

The reason is this company is the first in more than 70 years to kick off new uranium refining operations in the United States. 

The high grade uranium fuel, which it produces from raw ore, is exactly the kind which the next generation of nuclear reactors will require to produce energy. 

There’s really no way to overstate the importance of this company, yet one look at its stock and you’ll instantly realize that the market is completely overlooking it. 

I’ve been following this company for more than a year now and saw the potential long before Biden allowed for the waiver of the import ban. 

This company is nothing less than a lynchpin for the future nuclear industry in the U.S., and by extension, the future of the tech industry as well. 

Want to learn more about it?

I recently released this video presentation to my premium readership.