The AI boom has a dirty secret: it’s absolutely devouring electricity. NuScale Power, the company behind the only small modular reactor (SMR) design with full US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, thinks it has the answer.
NuScale is in discussions with ENTRA1 Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority for what could become the largest deployment of SMR capacity in the United States, targeting up to 6 GW of nuclear power. That’s enough to run roughly 60 new data centers or power around 4.5 million homes. The agreement is projected for September 2025.
The energy math behind AI’s power hunger
US data centers consumed about 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023. By 2030, that figure is expected to hit 9% or more, driven almost entirely by AI workloads.
NuScale’s SMR technology comes with NRC-approved features that are particularly attractive for data center operators: reduced emergency planning zones and the ability to operate in “island mode,” essentially running independently from the broader grid.
