WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump administration is pushing nuclear energy to power artificial intelligence data centers and Idaho is set to play a crucial role in this transition. However, critics say nuclear has a history of unfulfilled promises which will likely play out again.
The Department of Energy’s call for energy project proposals at the Idaho National Laboratory wound down last week. It is part of the administration’s strategy to leverage AI for national security. But nuclear energy projects have a long history of taking longer than expected to build and costing more than proposed.
Leigh Ford, executive director of the Idaho-based nuclear energy watchdog Snake River Alliance, said President Donald Trump is using executive orders to try to speed up nuclear projects.
“Trump is attempting to cut the timing of permitting, which probably would only shave a year off that whole process,” Ford pointed out. “It would take way too long to build a nuclear reactor if they need the energy now.”
The nuclear technology known as small modular reactors, which involve miniaturized versions of larger reactors, is one approach expected to play a role in the energy sector going forward. However, as Ford noted, none of the reactors have been built or come online in the United States yet, and none are projected to before 2030.
Ford argued the country’s resources would be better used to invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which are cheap and already proven to work. Along with the nuclear waste the projects could create at the Idaho National Laboratory, Ford stressed another downside to AI data centers is the large amounts of water they use.
“We live in the high desert and that is a sole-source aquifer,” Ford emphasized. “The Snake River aquifer is the lifeblood of Idaho and without that water, life wouldn’t be possible here.”
Ford added it is disturbing the Trump administration has determined nuclear power is critical to national security in its global AI race and is developing a project known as “Manhattan Project 2.0,” named after the World War II program which produced the first nuclear weapons.
“Critical defense facilities is what AI data centers are now, and the executive orders really laid out the landscape for declaring energy as a national emergency,” Ford observed. “I think it’s really going to take the public input out of it.”
