Constellation Energy Corporation

Generally, people don't welcome a nuclear reactor in their backyard... If people want to have fun with reactors, that's fine, have fun with reactors. But it's not a serious endeavor compared to the Sun. It's a fun science project... it's just peanuts compared to the Sun.

Friedberg oppose ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E238 · 2025-08-09 ▶ 59:10

These are these very clean, meltdown proof nuclear energy production systems that are being deployed at scale in China now, and the US doesn't have any, and we have no path to getting these deployed.

So just to give credit where credit's due, I think all the stuff we're seeing on the small modular reactors at some level, owes its renaissance to AI and the energy demands of AI.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E237 · 2025-08-01 ▶ 1:10:13

We have a trillion dollars now that we can put into nuclear power plants and these small modular reactors and that's what Lutnick said he wanted to spend it on.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E237 · 2025-08-01 ▶ 29:07

scaling energy production, I personally think we need to fix the regulatory roadblocks in nuclear. And Chris Wright's been very vocal on this.

Gavin Baker support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E236 · 2025-07-19 ▶ 55:55

I mean, electrical production is fundamental to AI. If we do not significantly increase kind of domestic energy production and electricity generation, you know, we're already at a disadvantage to China. And I do think we want to close that kind of electrical generation gap as quickly as we can. You know, natural gas is great. Nuclear is great. Solar is great. Batteries are great. We need it all.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E234 · 2025-07-04 ▶ 16:23

but what I'm hopeful for is it creates a natural market force for nuclear and that we actually see a better proliferation in nuclear, which Secretary Wright has said, and President Trump signed these EOs a couple of weeks ago, to reduce the regulatory burden on nuclear and increase the ability for nuclear to proliferate much more quickly than has been the case historically.

Chamath oppose ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E234 · 2025-07-04 ▶ 19:31

I still worry that with nuclear, the issue won't be the federal regulations. I think that it's good that the president cleaned it up. The real problem is going to be the local and state regulators and how quickly they're willing to turn these on. And the reality is that these are 10-year projects. And so even if you say go from today, the earliest these things can be turned on, really, in 2032, 2033 That's far too late.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:23:08

Well, I agree that you need to build out power, but I think the administration is committed to doing that. Drill baby, drill.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:30:13

This generation's Manhattan and Apollo Project is energy production scaling in the United States. That's it. All the other shit flows.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:24:47

The thing I do watch the most, Sacks, and that I do think, you and I have talked about this, that I do think is the critical linchpin for all of those other points of abundance being unleashed is the energy equation.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:26:59

Yeah, look at the number of times that Elon has said this. Like it's like the amount of energy that's available if we just harness it from the sun and redirect it with some storage, would solve all of our problems. But the problem is that we're at like just a little over a terawatt. We're inching along in gigawatts, whereas China is in the terawatts, adding terawatts.

because we are rapidly scaling with regard to our own energy production. You have to be an energy intensive nation in order to produce AI. And so the United States has to play this game.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E226 · 2025-05-02 ▶ 1:21:17

And you see that on the power side, right? You're going from 100 megawatt datacenters to 300 megawatts to, we're just starting to now see the first gigawatt power datacenters. I don't even think they're live yet, but this is where they're trying to get to. And I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that we could be at five or 10 gigawatt datacenters in the next, I don't know, several years.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E222 · 2025-04-05 ▶ 1:18:01

But then underneath that AI thing, we have these two very complicated problems. One is a meaningful energy problem. I've been talking about this now incessantly. We don't have enough electrons. We just don't.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E218 · 2025-03-08 ▶ 28:07

We know that AI needs a tremendous amount of power. And whatever you thought you knew, actually, you had to re-underwrite because what Elon has shown is actually you need to now create these mega clusters, 100,000 GPUs going to a million GPUs. All of the power forecasting that we have is miscast. It doesn't even account for this, number one. Number two, there are 35,000 applications into FERC to get approved to generate electricity. 35,000, that's going to meander through some administrative rigmarole. There is a five-year delay to get a gas turbine into America and online.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E215 · 2025-02-15 ▶ 27:58

We have to win some of these key building block technologies, we want to win in chips, we want to win in AI models, we want to win in applications. He said we need to build, we need to unlock energy for these companies.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E213 · 2025-01-31 ▶ 1:32:48

That's super interesting, Travis. That's like, it's almost like the idea that we all talk about today is data centers and data centers need their own power substations.

But then there's like this dark horse that nobody's talking about, which is, it's called electricity, it's called power. And all these vehicles are electric vehicles. And if you said, yeah, I just did some like quick back of the envelope calcs, if all of the miles in California went EV ride sharing, you would need to double the energy capacity of California.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 1:49:44

The entire country knows that we need to win the AI race. The numbers are the numbers. You put up a chart like that, Thomas, and there's only one way for us to win, and that's to build more nuclear power plants.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ US nuclear power buildout gets announced in 2025 E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 1:33:14

I will tell you that there is a lot of capital, and we mentioned this last time, a lot of intellectual capital in the United States that's eager, hungry and ready to get moving on build out. The only thing that's challenged and the only thing that's holding it back is regulatory challenges, regulatory roadblocks.

So, you know, we expect and we think just the trend generally towards nuclear energy is going to continue. It's been proven in China. It's been proven in Europe. I think it will show to be a key part of the AI kind of arms race

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 1:27:42

But just today it looked like President Trump overturned it and now it's full seam ahead. If you have it permitted, then it's all about just get the power, however you need the power, which I think is the smart decision. Back to your earlier point, we are in a race here.

If you think of the GPU as the atomic unit of the future, right, and the key competitive advantage and the key kind of ingredient, you can't power a GPU without a data center, and you can't use a data center without power. So I do think at the end of the day, it really comes down to the grid and it comes down to power. So I think that's kind of constraint number one.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 56:37

which is energy, electricity capacity buildout in the United States because it's critical. Building AI infrastructure means that we need to build energy infrastructure.