NASDAQ:EQIX 4 October 2025 - 14 February 2026

A quarter century ago, nuclear energy was in decline. Fear of meltdowns, regulatory hurdles and the ascendancy of cheap natural gas reduced nuclear’s share of world electricity from about 18 % in the 1990s to roughly 9 % today investing.com. The disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima galvanized public opposition and slowed investment, while nations turned to renewables and gas. Today, however, a new force—artificial intelligence—may be upending the calculus. Machine‑learning models like GPT‑5 run on data centers that consume vast amounts of electricity, and the prospect of constant, clean energy is pushing governments and Silicon Valley to rethink nuclear technology. This article explores the drivers, technologies, policies and controversies of the so‑called nuclear renaissance and assesses whether the hype will translate into real power. Goldman Sachs forecasts that energy demand from data‑center workloads will jump by 165 % in the next five years utilitydive.com. A separate analysis cited by EnergyTech suggests big technology companies will need 85–90 GW of new nuclear capacity to power AI data centers, yet only ~10 % of this capacity will be available by 2030 energytech.com. The AI boom is projected to make data centers consume 12 % of U.S. electricity by 2028