Nuclear & SMR Power for AI Data Centers — Market

Verified claims and product-axis read for Nuclear & SMR Power for AI Data Centers. Every fact below is sourced; every product judgment traces back to underlying signals.

Verified facts

• Oklo announced plans to acquire Atomic Alchemy in late 2024 to expand into medical isotope production using its reactor heat. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• The U.S. nuclear fleet capacity factor averaged ~92.7% in 2023 per EIA, the highest of any generation type. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• ERCOT projects peak demand growth of ~80 GW by 2030 vs ~85 GW historical peak, driven significantly by data center and crypto loads. ↗ (other)
• Constellation reported its nuclear fleet operated at >94% capacity factor in 2023, among the highest globally. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• Holtec's SMR-300 (formerly SMR-160) is rated at 300 MWe and Holtec announced intent to deploy at Palisades and at Oyster Creek sites. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• Oklo's NRC pre-application engagement on the resubmitted Aurora design accelerated through 2024, with Oklo targeting a new combined license application in 2025. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• Kairos Power began construction on its Hermes demonstration reactor at Oak Ridge in July 2024 after receiving an NRC construction permit in late 2023. ↗ (other)
• Westinghouse's AP300 SMR, announced in May 2023 as a derivative of the AP1000, is rated at ~300 MWe and targets first deployment in the early 2030s. ↗ _(historical_event)_
• Vogtle Units 3 and 4 came online ~7 years late and ~$17B over budget vs initial estimates, costing ~$35B total for ~2.2 GW. ↗ (financial)
• TerraPower's Natrium received ~$2B in DOE ARDP funding (50/50 cost share) under the original program structure. ↗ (financial)

Top products (engine read)

Xe-100 high-temperature gas reactor — HTGR pebble-bed SMR (80 MWe / four-pack 320 MWe)

Opportunity: Industrial process-heat plus hyperscaler power are simultaneously chasing the same Xe-100 platform — Amazon for data centers, Dow for steam at Seadrift — validating SMR as a non-utility OEM business model.

Most commercially de-risked U.S. SMR right now: dual anchor customers across hyperscale and chemicals, Series C closed, and X-energy's hiring tilts to construction/supply chain/plant ops which is consistent with a project entering build phase rather than design.

VOYGR SMR module — small modular reactor

Opportunity: Only NRC-certified U.S. SMR design, but flagship CFPP project cancelled when subscription targets failed at ~$89/MWh — VOYGR needs a creditworthy hyperscaler/industrial offtaker to replace lost municipal demand.

VOYGR is the most regulator-mature SMR in the U.S., and NuScale is still hiring program engineers and contract managers, but it lacks an anchor customer after CFPP — risk is demand-side, not technology-side.

Natrium reactor — sodium fast reactor + molten-salt storage

Opportunity: Natrium's molten-salt storage gives it a dispatchable peaking advantage worth ~155 MWe for grids facing data-center spikes, but commercial start slipped 2 years because the entire U.S. HALEU supply chain was Russian-dependent.

Differentiated load-following SMR with the Wyoming demo as anchor; hiring is supply-chain and QA heavy, consistent with a project crossing from design to procurement. The binding constraint is upstream HALEU, not reactor demand.

HALEU fuel — high-assay low-enriched uranium feedstock for advanced reactors

Opportunity: Every Gen-IV SMR (Natrium, Xe-100, Aurora) needs HALEU and only one U.S. cascade is producing it at kg-scale — the chokepoint that already slipped Natrium 2 years is now the single biggest schedule risk to the entire SMR build-out.

HALEU is the upstream pinch point that determines whether the SMR cohort can hit late-2020s COD dates; ADVANCE Act passage reflects Congress recognizing this. Centrus is the only named domestic supplier in evidence — capacity expansion or a second supplier is a clear opportunity.

See the Products and Strategy modules for the full product list and forward-looking judgment.