Media Coverage
Source: Hart Energy
Media Coverage
Press Contacts: Erik Cummins, Matt Hyams, Taina Rosa, Olivia Thomas
09.30.24
With data centers increasingly seeking new power sources and a recent deal to restart Three Mile Island to do just that, Pillsbury’s Nuclear Energy practice leader Jeff Merrifield told Hart Energy that the movement to revive nuclear power use in the U.S. “has been bubbling along for some time.”
However, professionals in the industry say the rebranding of the plant is “not a needle-mover” against natural gas demand growth from the artificial intelligence boom, according to recent coverage.
Given the concurrent interest in small modular reactors, Merrifield, who also serves as chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, said that trend has been around a long time, too: “We have a lot of portable reactors. People just don’t think about them: Every U.S. submarine has a nuclear power plant.”
He added that, “We’ve been deploying mobile nuclear power plants as a country for 60-plus years,” citing U.S. deployments at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica and in the Panama Canal.
“If you can have a power source that you can bring in on the back of a tractor trailer and provide the power you need for that remote operation, that’s a pretty desirable thing,” he concluded.
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