If that’s enough to get the same thing happening, but bigger, read on…
AI Collision 💥
It’s 2025 and it will probably take us two to three months to remember to write that number instead of 2024.
So, what does 2025 have in store for us? Well, the continuation of major technology investment megatrends, that’s for sure, but three in particular are set to rip the markets higher:
AI
Crypto
Nuclear
Actually, make it four – quantum computing too.
That said, to kick off the new year, I’m actually going to throw back to 2024 and a piece that I think you should take on or take on again if you’ve seen it before.
This is a good sign of what to expect from two of these trends in AI and nuclear. This is a train that is well and truly leaving the station, it will get a head of steam going in 2025 and may make fast moving investors a lot of money. But if you want to know what AI and nuclear looks like in 2025, check out this from 2024…
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Three Mile Island is proof AI and Nuclear are a match made in heaven 😇
(24 September 2024)
“…the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history.”
That’s how the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission described the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979.
Three Mile Island was a nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania that through a series of failures in its operating procedures and safety redundancies led to the nuclear core of its number 2 reactor being exposed and undergoing a partial meltdown leading to the release of radiation into the environment.
Thankfully, the radiation release was so little there has been no linking of the incident to any long term public health problems. Although it did lead to heightened nuclear safety and engineering design, it also is still recognised as one of the world’s major nuclear failures and is regularly used as a reason why nuclear energy is too dangerous as an energy source.
The clean up of Three Mile Island lasted from 1979 immediately after the incident through to 1993. The plant did reopen it’s number 1 reactor in 1985 but then retired the entire facility again in 2019.
A report in 2019 about its closure noted the decommissioning of the plant would take 60 years to complete.
Except…
Last week, only five years into its decommission timeline, Three Mile Island had a lifeline thrown to it…by Microsoft.
In an extraordinary deal, Constellation Energy (NASDAQ:CEG) one of the world’s largest nuclear energy operators announced it had entered a 20 year power purchase agreement with Microsoft.
Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) announced today the signing of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that will pave the way for the launch of the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC) and restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1, which operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago today. Under the agreement, Microsoft will purchase energy from the renewed plant as part of its goal to help match the power its data centers in PJM use with carbon-free energy.
The announcement went into detail about the potential economic impact of restarting the plant including the 3,400 direct and indirect jobs it would create, the billions in GDP it would contribute to the economy and the fact it would generate huge amounts of carbon free energy.
But the real story here isn’t so much that Three Mile Island is set to come back online. The massive news here is that it’s Microsoft buying up all the energy from it for at least 20 years and using it for its data centres.
Or to put it simply, Microsoft just bought a nuclear reactor to power its AI.
This of course set a fire under the backside of pretty much all nuclear related stocks late last week. Constellation alone was up 22% on the news, other nuclear stocks like NuScale Power (up 11%), Centrus Energy (up 8.5%) and Oklo Inc. (up 27%) all flew higher.
The reason the whole nuclear market was on a tear was the wider market realising that if Microsoft was prepared to spend up for 20 years of nuclear energy for its datacentres AI future, who else would be coming to market looking for nuclear solutions?
And social media was going nuts with commentary on this topic as well. Mainly because everyone with half an ounce of knowledge about AI has been saying for a long time (as we have) that the only solution to AI’s thirst for energy is nuclear energy.
i've been going on and on about this, but basically, AI flips electricity on its head.
previously, nearly half the cost of electricity to the consumer was allocated towards distributing it where (and when) you want it.
And if you’re in two minds still about how well nuclear energy and AI go together, maybe consider what Yann LeCunn the chief AI scientist at Meta had to say on the subject…
AI datacenters will be built next to energy production sites that can produce gigawatt-scale, low-cost, low-emission electricity continuously. Basically, next to nuclear power plants. The advantage is that there is no need for expensive and wasteful long-distance distribution… https://t.co/bVxNmYZiQh
This is an ongoing story that will continue to unfold.
What is clear is that the rollout of AI is not slowing down whatsoever. If anything its accelerating, and while Microsoft and Meta will play a big role, there’s also a sleeping giant, based right smack bang in the “Golden Triangle” in the UK that’s not only set to play a big role, but right now might even be the most important AI company in the world.
We will see more spending on both data centres and nuclear energy from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple and other giants of tech loaded up with cash.
This is both a tipping point for AI in terms of there is a solution to its insatiable appetite for energy, and for nuclear energy as the world starts to properly wake up to its absolute necessity for our AI future.
**Due to holiday breaks, days off and the fact pretty much everyone is on holiday, we’re pausing the Boomers & Busters section until we’re back on deck and keeping a closer eye on the market and market movers in AI.**
From the hive mind 🧠
Wasn’t it whistleblowers against Boeing that kept getting eliminated… sorry, I mean, dying in strange circumstances? We weren’t expecting the same thing to happen to an AI whistleblower!
I think with the direction our world is heading and the speed of AI progress, that I’d be more concerned if students weren’tusing AI to such an extent in their work.
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️
As the first edition of AI Collision for 2025 I would like to know how you think this year is going to play out for the AI market and AI stocks…
Exciting and ‘wobbly’ times ahead this year, I do believe?!