Will nuclear power make a comeback?

In 2024, Microsoft signed a deal to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island.

Three Mile Island. The name that ended nuclear expansion in America in 1979. Now it's coming back online to run AI.

That's the whole story in one sentence.

What's the pattern?

Technologies don't die because they stop working. They get frozen by a moment. Three Mile Island in 1979. Chernobyl in 1986. Fukushima in 2011. Each one froze nuclear for a decade in a different part of the world.

Then a bigger need arrives. The need this time is electricity, enormous amounts of it, clean and constant, for data centers that can't wait for the wind. The International Energy Agency reported that global nuclear generation hit a record in 2025, with more than sixty reactors under construction.

In Radical Next I wrote that we need urgent, efficient, regenerative energy options here and now, and that the chip wars and the race for compute make it more urgent. I meant it about every option. Nuclear is one of the few that's clean, constant, and already proven at scale.

The fears weren't irrational. They were the panic stage, and the panic had a real grain of truth inside it. But sixty years of safety engineering later, the calculation has changed, and so has the alternative.

What should leaders do now?

So, three things.

If you buy power: ask about the mix. Data centers signing nuclear deals are locking in constant clean supply for decades. That's a competitive position, not just a sustainability line.

If you set policy: separate 1979 fear from 2026 fact. The small modular reactors now being licensed are not the plants of the 1970s. Judge them on what they are.

And watch the timeline honestly. New reactors take a decade. Restarts take years. The nuclear comeback is real and slow. Plan for both.

The reactor that ended an era is starting a new one. That's the pattern. Nothing stays frozen when the need gets big enough.

What's the technology your industry froze in fear that a bigger need is about to thaw?

Related: Will AI's power bill decide who wins the next decade?

Sam Rad, The Change Futurist. Keynote speaker on change, transformation, resilience, and AI adoption. Author of Radical Next. Book a keynote