The Trump administration’s plan to approve nuclear power plants in just three weeks has sparked a heated safety debate. Normally, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes four to five years to approve a nuclear plant. That process includes environmental reviews, design checks, and strict site selection requirements. Critics worry that cutting that timeline so drastically could put public safety at risk.
The push comes as AI data centers are eating up enormous amounts of electricity. In 2024, they used roughly 4% of all U.S. electricity. That number’s expected to more than double by 2030. An estimated 680 data centers are planned across the country, needing around 186 gigawatts of power. Trump said the nation needs “more than double the energy currently in the country just to take care of the AI plants.”
The surge in demand’s already hitting consumers hard. At PJM Interconnection, which serves millions of people across the Eastern U.S., data centers added $23 billion in costs — about 40% of the total — in the last three capacity auctions. States like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois face billions in grid upgrade bills tied to data center growth.
To protect everyday Americans from higher electricity bills, the White House secured a pledge from major tech companies. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon all agreed to “build, bring, or buy” their own power and cover the cost of transmission and grid upgrades. This agreement wasn’t backed by a new law, though. And cost allocation decisions still depend on a complex mix of state and federal rules, not just the White House. Tech giants have also reportedly pledged formal support for tripling nuclear energy production by 2050, a commitment made at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December 2023.
Some tech companies aren’t waiting for grid connections at all. A report found 46 data centers planned to build their own on-site power plants. Most of those plants will run on natural gas, despite many tech companies’ clean energy promises. Utilities requested $31 billion in rate increases last year, more than double the amount sought in 2024, with the steepest increases tied to states with heavy data center development. Elon Musk’s xAI even deployed unpermitted mobile generators in Tennessee and Mississippi to quickly power up data centers.
The administration’s framed all of this as a necessary response to an energy system that wasn’t built for the AI era.
References
- https://fortune.com/2026/01/21/trump-davos-nuclear-power-plant-approval-data-centers-ai-race-energy/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-on-site-power-plants-trump-announces-2026-2
- https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/american_genius_says_dont_panic/
- https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/04/trump-ai-data-centers-electricity-00811909
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNaFOhou_AA
- https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2796535-big-tech-to-sign-pledge-to-pay-for-ai-buildout
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/accelerating-federal-permitting-of-data-center-infrastructure/
