\u201cThe project has been such a bloated disaster that many pundits think it could be make-or-break for the wholesale future of the United States nuclear sector,\u201d I wrote<\/a> about Vogtle back in 2024. \u201cBut there are two ways to interpret the cautionary tale presented by Vogtle: either you think that the lesson is not to build new reactors, or the lesson is to build nuclear reactors better.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Tech is clearly choosing the latter option. Nuclear power has gained favor<\/a> in Silicon Valley as a potential solution to its runaway energy demand, which has been pushed into overdrive by rapid AI integration. As the public and the government ratchet up pressure<\/a> for Big Tech to solve its energy problem \u2013 the burden of which currently rests on consumers, whether they support or benefit from AI or not \u2013 many tech bigwigs are starting to pour investment dollars into the nuclear sector.<\/p>\n Enter the \u201cDigital Age for Nuclear.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Microsoft and NVIDIA are throwing their enormous weight behind solving the major hurdles preventing a new nuclear era in the United States. They think that digitizing the analog processes upholding the sector will be a game-changer for allowing more efficient growth. This would be critical for allowing nuclear power generation capacity growth to come anywhere close to keeping pace with energy demand growth from data centers.<\/p>\n The new \u2018ecosystem\u2019 being rolled out by the two companies \u201cprovides end-to-end tools that combine AI and digital twins for creating faster iterative design and engineering solutions,\u201d Interesting Engineering described in a recent report<\/a>. \u201cLicensing and permitting is handled by Generative AI for document drafting and gap analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: 5 Stocks to Buy Now That The Strait of Hormuz is Closed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n More sophisticated modelling capabilities will also ease the process of designing new reactors. \u201cWhile traditional 3D models only map physical space, 4D (time scheduling) and 5D (cost tracking) simulations can virtually construct the plant before shovels hit the dirt,\u201d states a Microsoft press release<\/a> related to the project.<\/p>\n These benefits are not just theoretical \u2013 Microsoft says that they are already seeing efficiency gains thanks to the collaborative initiative. The toolkit is already being rolled out in smaller spaces like Aalo Atomics and Idaho National Lab. And the results have been astonishing. Aalo has reported a 92% reduction permitting timelines, resulting in an estimated annual savings of $80 million.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo things matter most: enterprise-scale complexity and mission-critical reliability,\u201d Yasir Arafat, CTO of Aalo Atomics, was quoted by Interesting Engineering. \u201cWe\u2019re deploying something complex at a scale only a company like Microsoft really understands.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to streamlining the development and deployment of conventional nuclear reactors, Big Tech is also heavily invested in unlocking commercial nuclear fusion, which many proponents view as a sort of silver-bullet solution to creating huge amounts of energy without compromising on climate goals or producing hazardous nuclear waste. And, once again, they\u2019re counting on AI to crack the code<\/a>.<\/p>\n By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n More Top Reads From Oilprice.com<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tech giants Microsoft and NVIDIA are collaborating on an artificial intelligence project designed to accelerate the development of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[186749,291,289,290,986,186750,18,59453,19,17,305,10950,186747,292,186748,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-415218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-aalo-atomics","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-data-centers","13":"tag-digital-engineering","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-energy-demand","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-microsoft","19":"tag-nuclear-energy","20":"tag-nuclear-power-plants","21":"tag-nvidia","22":"tag-plant-vogtle","23":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116330484776791124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/book.jpg\"\/)
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