⚛️ Big Tech’s $25B Grid Grab + Nuclear Goes Fast-Track

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The grid is sweating, NRC is hustling, and Big Tech just wrote some monster checks for AI energy. If you blinked, you missed a month that basically redefined what “infrastructure” means.

Here’s everything you need to know in under 5 mins:

Weekly Round Up:

⚛️ Nuclear Moves

• Clinch River SMR clears NRC gate
  TVA just pushed two BWRX-300 units into formal review. The first U.S. utility-led SMR to make it this far.

  → Why it matters: If NRC fast-tracks this, SMRs move from slide decks to rebar faster than expected.

• Rosatom doubles down on molten salt
  Rosatom finished stage-one MSR design, with lab tests in 2025 and a demo by 2030.

  → Why it matters: MSRs = high-temp heat for hydrogen + industrial use. The geopolitics? Spicy.

• TerraPower gets a shortcut
  NRC plans to finish Natrium’s permit review by end-2025. That’s years off the normal slog.

  → Why it matters: Gates’ Wyoming project just went from “someday” to “sooner than Wall Street thinks.”

• Palisades reboot locks Microsoft
  Utility Dive reports NRC sign-off for Palisades’ 2028 restart under a 20-year PPA with Microsoft.

  → Why it matters: Cloud power just turned nuclear. AI needs baseload, and Big Tech knows it.

🖥️ Compute + Data-Center Watch

• OpenAI + Oracle bulk up Stargate to 4.5 GW
  Reuters says the Texas build now equals four big reactors in planned capacity.

  → Why it matters: This isn’t a data center—it’s a city-sized inference engine.

• Crusoe + Tallgrass map 1.8 GW Wyoming campus
  Crusoe targets 10 GW scalability, tapping wind + nuclear-heavy grids.

  → Why it matters: Compute gravity shifts inland where power flows steady.

• Hyperscaler spend goes orbital
  Dell’Oro pegs Q1 CapEx at $134B (+53% YoY), with another 30% pop coming in 2025.

  → Why it matters: The AI arms race is now a power arms race.

• DOE earmarks federal land for hyperscale builds
  Politico Pro lists four sites (the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and Savannah River Site) pre-wired for transmission to host AI-scale data centers.

  → Why it matters: Public land is the new secret weapon in the energy-permitting wars.

• White House rolls out AI Action Plan
  Fast-track permitting and carbon-free PPAs just got federal blessing.

  → Why it matters: Compute policy is energy policy now—and nuclear is the quiet winner.

Signals from the Stack

• Licensing tailwinds: NRC fast-tracks (Natrium, Clinch River) + Texas R&D dollars mean shorter paths from CAD to concrete.

• Capital convergence: Big Tech isn’t just renting racks. They’re writing 20-year nuclear PPAs and building gigawatt campuses.

• Grid crunch: Data-center CapEx up 53% YoY, federal land in play, and carbon-free juice now the gating factor for AI supremacy.

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