PJ Vogt

And one way to do that is to actually just take nuclear plants that were previously shut down and bring them back.

It's called re-commissioning.

Re-commissioning old plants is both technically and politically easier than building new ones, so you can get more power faster.

Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa, and the famous one you've heard of, Three Mile Island is also coming back.

What I found interesting is that two of those plants are being brought online specifically for tech companies.

The power they'll generate has already been sold to Google and to Microsoft.

If you told me in 1995 that Microsoft would restart Three Mile Island to deal with the rising energy demand partly caused by teenagers using computers to cheat on their homework, I would have had follow-up questions.

Of course, the next generation of nuclear isn't just recommissioning older plants.

People also want to build newer, more high-tech ones, advanced reactors.

There's a few different categories of these reactors, some of them very unlike the nuclear reactors I was used to.

I'm gonna tell you about them.

So some of these advanced reactors fall under a category called generation four reactors.

Generation four reactors are designed to be safer than the reactors we have now.

Some use different coolant.

Some might use a different kind of fuel.

But the most interesting ones have this slightly hard to explain quality called inherent safety characteristics.

This is a nuclear policy wonk I spoke to named Adam Stein from the Breakthrough Institute.

He was walking me through this idea of redesigning reactors so they have fewer parts that can fail.

Reactors with inherent safety designs are not theoretical.

They exist.