This piece was originally published in the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook.
Summary
To unleash a nuclear renaissance, the US needs to leverage the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office (LPO)'s ability to de-risk and finance nuclear investments.
Problem
Headlines claim that America and China are in a race for computational dominance, but this can obscure the hard reality of the industrial challenge datacenter energy demand poses for America. The real race is for thermodynamic supremacy. If America wants to win, it needs to invest in radically expanding its nuclear fleet.
However, the nuclear industry has been trapped in a vicious cycle. Anemic supply chains have increased financing costs, since new builds must establish said supply chains from scratch. As a consequence, supply chain development has been stultified, which has led to delayed deployment and cost overruns, which then discouraged further investment in nuclear, thus perpetuating the brittleness of its supply chains. As a result, private capital looks askance at nuclear financing.
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