Big Tech's AI fantasy hits a nuclear wall: No fuel, no welders - and no Plan B

MW Big Tech's AI fantasy hits a nuclear wall: No fuel, no welders - and no Plan B

By Charlie Garcia

Big Tech is buying small reactors. Washington is buying time. Russia and China? They rule the nuclear-power world.

Nuclear power offers stock investors strong growth potential - but the wait could be long.

Everyone in Washington now loves nuclear power. Republicans love it because it annoys environmentalists. Democrats love it because AI needs electricity and AI is the only thing they love more than hating fossil fuels. You can tell the Pentagon loves it because it just airlifted a microreactor to Utah on a C-17 - the military equivalent of posting a flex on Instagram.

When both political parties agree this enthusiastically, check your wallet. The last time we had bipartisan consensus like this was for ethanol. Corn got expensive, bourbon got political - and nobody's car ran better.

The nuclear renaissance is real. The physics works. The politics work.

The only things that don't work are the costs, the fuel, the workforce and the regulator. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Nobody checked the invoice

Faith is a wonderful thing in religion. In capital markets it tends to get expensive.

The Institute for Energy Research projects 166 gigawatts of new peak load by end of decade. Fifteen times what New York City uses.

Data centers will consume an estimated 9% to 17% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from 4.5% today. AI does not nap. It does not dim. It does not care about your feelings toward wind turbines.

Small-modular (SMR) nuclear reactors are supposed to fill the gap. Built in factories. Assembled on site. Deployed at old coal plants. Powering data centers, steel mills, military bases. The pitch is seductive. The pitch is also missing a price tag.

First-of-a-kind SMR costs $89 to $180 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Combined-cycle gas: $40 to $65 per. That is not a rounding error. That is a different religion.

NuScale Power's (SMR) Idaho project saw costs rise 75%. The company's cost per kilowatt hit $20,139. Meanwhile, Vogtle in Georgia, the most expensive reactor in American history, came in at $18,000. NuScale beat Vogtle's record in a simulation, before anyone poured concrete. That takes a special kind of ambition.

Canada's Darlington SMR: C$21 billion for four units. Co-developer GE Hitachi's original pitch was a fraction of that. Sticker shock is part of the nuclear tradition. Like Thanksgiving, but with isotopes and congressional hearings.

The bull case says MWh costs drop to $58 to $100 with volume and learning curves. The bear case says nuclear projects have never once come in on budget. Not in France. Not in Finland. Not anywhere humans operate with permits and lawyers. Faith is a wonderful thing in religion. In capital markets it tends to get expensive.

5,000 welders and a prayer

The nation that built Hoover Dam in five years cannot staff a single reactor project without importing labor.

The U.S. has fewer than 5,000 welders certified for nuclear-grade work. You could fit them in a minor-league ballpark with room for the hot dog vendors. The country needs to triple its nuclear workforce by 2050. Forty percent of current workers will retire this decade. The welding society projects a 320,000 shortfall by 2029 across all industries.

Training a nuclear welder takes five years. You can sign an executive order in an afternoon. You cannot weld a reactor vessel with one. Not even a really good one signed with a very big pen at a very big desk.

America forgot how to build things. We outsourced manufacturing. Then we outsourced the people who knew how manufacturing worked. Then we outsourced the schools that trained those people. The nation that built Hoover Dam in five years cannot staff a single reactor project without importing labor.

Moscow and Beijing deal. Washington debates.

The U.S. sanctioned Russian oil, their oligarchs, their yachts. But America still buys Russia's uranium.

Most advanced reactors need High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel. America has produced 920 kilograms of it. Total. Ever. From one demonstration cascade in Piketon, Ohio. That would not fuel a single reactor for a single year.

Russia controls 40% to 45% of global uranium enrichment. The U.S. sanctioned Russian oil, their oligarchs, their yachts. But America still buys Russia's uranium. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" while looking for a stick. The stick is on backorder.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $2.7 billion in January to build domestic enrichment. The new plants will start to produce in 2031. America is licensing reactors for 2027 that need fuel from plants that open in 2031. This is like selling plane tickets before anyone has built the airport.

Meanwhile, Russia's Rosatom earned $18 billion from overseas reactors in 2024. China deploys concessional loans at 1% to 6% interest. Russia offers 85% project financing over 25 years. Try getting those terms from JPMorgan.

Kazakhstan chose Russia and China. Washington was not in the room. Not even on the continent. A country sitting on the world's largest uranium reserves chose America's adversaries because the U.S. could not compete on financing. Indonesia intends to build plants with 4.3- to 7-gigawatt capacity. The country has 285 million people - and Russia and China are circling. Every reactor they build abroad is a client state locked in for half a century.

EXIM Bank unlocked $30 billion for Indo-Pacific deals and signed a $17.8 billion letter for Poland's Westinghouse reactors. Late to the party. But at the party. With shoes on.

Read: These energy stocks could see gains for years from Middle East supply disruptions

The adults wear hoodies

Big Tech has the balance sheets and the electricity addiction to bankroll what the U.S. government has spent 50 years failing to do.

The real nuclear financiers are not in Washington. Meta Platforms (META) signed for six gigawatts - more than Sweden's entire nuclear fleet - to power one AI supercluster called Prometheus. Except given how Prometheus ended up, someone should have Googled the myth before the press release.

Vistra (VST) locked in 20-year power purchase agreements with Meta, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Microsoft $(MSFT)$. Vistra earnings are projected to grow about 25% annually. Microsoft is restarting Three Mile Island with Constellation Energy (CEG). The reactor that defined American nuclear anxiety is now being resurrected to train AI models. If satirist P.J. O'Rourke were alive he would light a cigar and stare at that sentence for a full minute.

Big Tech has the balance sheets and the electricity addiction to bankroll what the U.S. government has spent 50 years failing to do. They do not care about your politics. They care about keeping the servers on. That clarity of purpose is worth more than every energy bill Congress has passed since Nixon.

How to play the renaissance that hasn't started yet

The nuclear renaissance is real, inevitable, and five to 10 years away from mattering unless you position now.

The nuclear renaissance is real, inevitable, and five to 10 years away from mattering unless you position now. Every smart investor knows the best time to buy a house is before the neighborhood improves. Consider:

1. Near term - The existing fleet:

-- Constellation Energy: Largest U.S. nuclear operator. Restarting Three Mile Island for Microsoft. When Big Tech needs baseload that never turns off, Constellation picks up the phone.

-- Vistra: Hyperscaler PPAs ramping through 2032. The market is paying for visibility. Vistra has it.

2. Mid-term - The fuel chain:

-- Cameco CCJ: Shares are up 700% in five years. The structural uranium supply deficit is not going away.

-- Centrus Energy LEU: The West's lone HALEU producer, with a $900 million DOE contract. If HALEU is the premium gasoline, Centrus owns the only refinery in the Western hemisphere.

3. Long term - The builders: These companies are options on the renaissance emerging in 2032 and beyond. Size positions accordingly.

-- BWX Technologies BWXT: Microreactors, naval reactors, TRISO (Tri-structural Isotropic) fuel. Its Ward 250 microreactor flown to Utah has their fingerprints on it. The company is defense + nuclear + plus AI.

-- GE Vernova GEV: The BWRX-300 SMR is their design. If the Tennessee Valley Authority's Clinch River site works, GEV owns the franchise.

-- NuScale Power: Only U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified SMR. No customer with a shovel in the ground. The lottery ticket.

-- Oklo OKLO: Pre-revenue company; Meta-backed. Oklo is either the future of energy or a very expensive science project named after a natural reactor in Gabon that most investors have never heard of.

Simply put, the nuclear renaissance is the most exciting infrastructure story of the next decade. All America needs is fuel it does not have, workers who do not exist, and a regulatory agency able to move faster than continental drift. If you invest, buy companies supplying the picks and shovels and avoid the hole in the ground. Above all, size your positions like a grownup.

Charlie Garcia is founder and a managing partner of R360, a peer-to-peer organization for individuals and families with a net worth of $100 million or more. He is the author of the "Capital Mischief" Substack. Follow him on X here.

More from Charlie Garcia:

The 'smart money' fled software stocks after Citrini's viral AI doomsday report. Here's where it's going.

This top stock picker spotted Nvidia and GLP-1s early - and made over 200%. Here's what he's buying now.

Kevin Warsh isn't who investors think he is - how you can profit from their mistake

China's green-energy revolution is losing $60 billion a year. Why are investors still throwing money at it?

-Charlie Garcia

MW Big Tech's AI fantasy hits a nuclear wall: No fuel, no welders - and no Plan B

By Charlie Garcia

Big Tech is buying small reactors. Washington is buying time. Russia and China? They rule the nuclear-power world.

Nuclear power offers stock investors strong growth potential - but the wait could be long.

Everyone in Washington now loves nuclear power. Republicans love it because it annoys environmentalists. Democrats love it because AI needs electricity and AI is the only thing they love more than hating fossil fuels. You can tell the Pentagon loves it because it just airlifted a microreactor to Utah on a C-17 - the military equivalent of posting a flex on Instagram.

When both political parties agree this enthusiastically, check your wallet. The last time we had bipartisan consensus like this was for ethanol. Corn got expensive, bourbon got political - and nobody's car ran better.

The nuclear renaissance is real. The physics works. The politics work.

The only things that don't work are the costs, the fuel, the workforce and the regulator. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Nobody checked the invoice

Faith is a wonderful thing in religion. In capital markets it tends to get expensive.

The Institute for Energy Research projects 166 gigawatts of new peak load by end of decade. Fifteen times what New York City uses.

Data centers will consume an estimated 9% to 17% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from 4.5% today. AI does not nap. It does not dim. It does not care about your feelings toward wind turbines.

Small-modular (SMR) nuclear reactors are supposed to fill the gap. Built in factories. Assembled on site. Deployed at old coal plants. Powering data centers, steel mills, military bases. The pitch is seductive. The pitch is also missing a price tag.

First-of-a-kind SMR costs $89 to $180 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Combined-cycle gas: $40 to $65 per. That is not a rounding error. That is a different religion.

NuScale Power's (SMR) Idaho project saw costs rise 75%. The company's cost per kilowatt hit $20,139. Meanwhile, Vogtle in Georgia, the most expensive reactor in American history, came in at $18,000. NuScale beat Vogtle's record in a simulation, before anyone poured concrete. That takes a special kind of ambition.

Canada's Darlington SMR: C$21 billion for four units. Co-developer GE Hitachi's original pitch was a fraction of that. Sticker shock is part of the nuclear tradition. Like Thanksgiving, but with isotopes and congressional hearings.

The bull case says MWh costs drop to $58 to $100 with volume and learning curves. The bear case says nuclear projects have never once come in on budget. Not in France. Not in Finland. Not anywhere humans operate with permits and lawyers. Faith is a wonderful thing in religion. In capital markets it tends to get expensive.

5,000 welders and a prayer

The nation that built Hoover Dam in five years cannot staff a single reactor project without importing labor.

The U.S. has fewer than 5,000 welders certified for nuclear-grade work. You could fit them in a minor-league ballpark with room for the hot dog vendors. The country needs to triple its nuclear workforce by 2050. Forty percent of current workers will retire this decade. The welding society projects a 320,000 shortfall by 2029 across all industries.

Training a nuclear welder takes five years. You can sign an executive order in an afternoon. You cannot weld a reactor vessel with one. Not even a really good one signed with a very big pen at a very big desk.

America forgot how to build things. We outsourced manufacturing. Then we outsourced the people who knew how manufacturing worked. Then we outsourced the schools that trained those people. The nation that built Hoover Dam in five years cannot staff a single reactor project without importing labor.

Moscow and Beijing deal. Washington debates.

The U.S. sanctioned Russian oil, their oligarchs, their yachts. But America still buys Russia's uranium.

Most advanced reactors need High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel. America has produced 920 kilograms of it. Total. Ever. From one demonstration cascade in Piketon, Ohio. That would not fuel a single reactor for a single year.

Russia controls 40% to 45% of global uranium enrichment. The U.S. sanctioned Russian oil, their oligarchs, their yachts. But America still buys Russia's uranium. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" while looking for a stick. The stick is on backorder.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $2.7 billion in January to build domestic enrichment. The new plants will start to produce in 2031. America is licensing reactors for 2027 that need fuel from plants that open in 2031. This is like selling plane tickets before anyone has built the airport.

Meanwhile, Russia's Rosatom earned $18 billion from overseas reactors in 2024. China deploys concessional loans at 1% to 6% interest. Russia offers 85% project financing over 25 years. Try getting those terms from JPMorgan.

Kazakhstan chose Russia and China. Washington was not in the room. Not even on the continent. A country sitting on the world's largest uranium reserves chose America's adversaries because the U.S. could not compete on financing. Indonesia intends to build plants with 4.3- to 7-gigawatt capacity. The country has 285 million people - and Russia and China are circling. Every reactor they build abroad is a client state locked in for half a century.

EXIM Bank unlocked $30 billion for Indo-Pacific deals and signed a $17.8 billion letter for Poland's Westinghouse reactors. Late to the party. But at the party. With shoes on.

Read: These energy stocks could see gains for years from Middle East supply disruptions

The adults wear hoodies

Big Tech has the balance sheets and the electricity addiction to bankroll what the U.S. government has spent 50 years failing to do.

The real nuclear financiers are not in Washington. Meta Platforms (META) signed for six gigawatts - more than Sweden's entire nuclear fleet - to power one AI supercluster called Prometheus. Except given how Prometheus ended up, someone should have Googled the myth before the press release.

Vistra (VST) locked in 20-year power purchase agreements with Meta, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT). Vistra earnings are projected to grow about 25% annually. Microsoft is restarting Three Mile Island with Constellation Energy (CEG). The reactor that defined American nuclear anxiety is now being resurrected to train AI models. If satirist P.J. O'Rourke were alive he would light a cigar and stare at that sentence for a full minute.

Big Tech has the balance sheets and the electricity addiction to bankroll what the U.S. government has spent 50 years failing to do. They do not care about your politics. They care about keeping the servers on. That clarity of purpose is worth more than every energy bill Congress has passed since Nixon.

How to play the renaissance that hasn't started yet

The nuclear renaissance is real, inevitable, and five to 10 years away from mattering unless you position now.

The nuclear renaissance is real, inevitable, and five to 10 years away from mattering unless you position now. Every smart investor knows the best time to buy a house is before the neighborhood improves. Consider:

1. Near term - The existing fleet:

-- Constellation Energy: Largest U.S. nuclear operator. Restarting Three Mile Island for Microsoft. When Big Tech needs baseload that never turns off, Constellation picks up the phone.

-- Vistra: Hyperscaler PPAs ramping through 2032. The market is paying for visibility. Vistra has it.

2. Mid-term - The fuel chain:

-- Cameco CCJ: Shares are up 700% in five years. The structural uranium supply deficit is not going away.

-- Centrus Energy LEU: The West's lone HALEU producer, with a $900 million DOE contract. If HALEU is the premium gasoline, Centrus owns the only refinery in the Western hemisphere.

3. Long term - The builders: These companies are options on the renaissance emerging in 2032 and beyond. Size positions accordingly.

-- BWX Technologies BWXT: Microreactors, naval reactors, TRISO (Tri-structural Isotropic) fuel. Its Ward 250 microreactor flown to Utah has their fingerprints on it. The company is defense + nuclear + plus AI.

-- GE Vernova GEV: The BWRX-300 SMR is their design. If the Tennessee Valley Authority's Clinch River site works, GEV owns the franchise.

-- NuScale Power: Only U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified SMR. No customer with a shovel in the ground. The lottery ticket.

-- Oklo OKLO: Pre-revenue company; Meta-backed. Oklo is either the future of energy or a very expensive science project named after a natural reactor in Gabon that most investors have never heard of.

Simply put, the nuclear renaissance is the most exciting infrastructure story of the next decade. All America needs is fuel it does not have, workers who do not exist, and a regulatory agency able to move faster than continental drift. If you invest, buy companies supplying the picks and shovels and avoid the hole in the ground. Above all, size your positions like a grownup.

Charlie Garcia is founder and a managing partner of R360, a peer-to-peer organization for individuals and families with a net worth of $100 million or more. He is the author of the "Capital Mischief" Substack. Follow him on X here.

More from Charlie Garcia:

The 'smart money' fled software stocks after Citrini's viral AI doomsday report. Here's where it's going.

This top stock picker spotted Nvidia and GLP-1s early - and made over 200%. Here's what he's buying now.

Kevin Warsh isn't who investors think he is - how you can profit from their mistake

China's green-energy revolution is losing $60 billion a year. Why are investors still throwing money at it?

-Charlie Garcia

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March 27, 2026 10:33 ET (14:33 GMT)

MW Big Tech's AI fantasy hits a nuclear wall: No -2-

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