“Around the time Jigar Shah became director of the loan programs office at the U.S. Department of Energy, his venture capitalist friends gave him an earful about the idea of investing in nuclear power startups. “Like, 20 of my best friends in 2021 told me, ‘Jigar, we will never, ever in a million years invest in nuclear power,’” said Shah, whose office doled out tens of billions of dollars in loans to clean energy projects, including nuclear.
Now, though, that sentiment has flipped completely. “Every one of the 20 has now invested in some nuclear company as a venture capitalist,” said Shah, who left the Department of Energy in January.
What’s changed? For the most part, artificial intelligence and the unquenchable thirst for electricity that it creates in data centers. In the years to come, big tech companies that run those data centers will urgently need around-the-clock sources of carbon-free energy like nuclear if they’re to have any hope of meeting their climate goals. As a result, they’ve started backing an array of efforts to build more nuclear capacity, which has further boosted investor confidence in the category.”
The plasma record reached a temperature of 50 million degrees. Image: CEA
On February 12, the CEA's WEST tokamak set a new world record by maintaining plasma for over 22 minutes, marking a 25% improvement on the previous record. This milestone is a significant step toward achieving stable fusion plasmas, which are crucial for future reactors like ITER, with researchers now aiming to extend plasma durations even further and increase its temperature for practical fusion energy production. (CEA)
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