Reject the Expansion of the Nuclear Industry for the Benefit of AI Firms

The current revival of the nuclear industry almost exclusively serves the demands for AI power, raising “significant concerns about whether the risks associated with nuclear facilities and unsubstantiated, fast-tracked initiatives can be justified.”1 Ironically, the pretense of an AI arms race with China is being used to “discard the very risk and safety thresholds established by the nuclear-arms-race era amid the threats of the Cold War.”2 The government justifies this elevated risk level by arguing that accelerated adoption of AI will give the US a technological edge over its global adversaries and lead to widespread societal benefits—both claims undermined by the questionable efficacy of AI-based systems.3 Given the untested and unproven nature of AI technologies and catastrophic risks of expanding nuclear power without robust safeguards, federal policymakers should reject efforts to rapidly scale the nuclear industry to meet the demands of AI firms.

  1. Sofia Guerra and Heidy Khlaaf, “Fission for Algorithms: The Undermining of Nuclear Regulation in Service of AI,” AI Now Institute, November 2025, https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/fission-for-algorithms. ↩︎
  2. Ibid at 15. ↩︎
  3. Ibid at 15; AI Now Institute, “Consulting the Record:AI Consistently Fails the Public,” June 3, 2025, https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/research/3-consulting-the-record-ai-consistently-fails-the-public. ↩︎