Half a century ago, raw emotion drove an anti-nuclear energy campaign that still stifles clean energy development in the U.S. Today, that same fear-driven playbook is being deployed in a campaign to shut down data centers.
Between 1970 and 1990, America built 95 nuclear power plants that still supply nearly a fifth of the nation’s electricity, but the minor incident at Three Mile Island led to cancellation of another 67 planned builds.
The U.S. did not build another nuclear powerplant between 1996 and 2016. Even today, efforts to revitalize the nation’s nuclear power industry face skepticism and legacy regulatory roadblocks.
Small modular reactors were first tested decades ago and could already be powering data centers had anti-nuclear fearmongering not stopped the Integral Fast Reactor program in 1994.
Many Americans today are rightly riled up about data centers robbing communities of precious drinking water resources and raising their electric bills. Others ask whether data centers are part of a vast secret conspiracy to take away their jobs, their freedom, and perhaps even their lives.
Goldman Sachs estimated that U.S. data center power demand could grow from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027. The push for an all-electric society has helped cause demand to rise faster than the nation can build new capacity. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise.
Neither the media nor the political establishment had prepared Americans for these shocking developments – so it is no wonder that data centers have become a political football.
The growing divide today is between the anti-nuclear playbook – now repurposed in ways that risk crippling the American economy – and the recognition that some data centers have disrupted lives, an unacceptable trade-off no matter how badly they are needed.
Fuel for the anti-data center fire stems from real-life stories of an Oregon community that found nearby Google data centers were using a quarter of their water supply. Data centers connected to the power grid also tend to drive up electricity costs, according to Consumer Reports. These real-life impacts have even the strongest supporters of the American Dream up in arms.
Many data center developers have failed to explain that every time we look up a movie showtime, tap a card at checkout, back up a video or ask Google a question we can thank a data center for making those tasks easy. They have also failed to fully address citizen concerns.
President Trump pushed the data center industry into signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge at the White House back in March. But that commitment was voluntary – and people too often tricked by pledges not followed through on remain skeptical.
The Chinese government and its proxies, which thrive on exploiting fear, are funding a national campaign against data centers to slow the growth of the U.S. economy.
A May report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute traced three interlocking vectors that demonstrate China’s targeting of American AI data centers.
These include Chinese and Russian state media propaganda; a U.S.-based NGO network bankrolled by expatriate Neville Roy Singham; and billions in foreign dark money from such sources as Switzerland’s Hansjörg Wyss and the Oak Foundation, funded by British billionaire Alan Parker.
Lead author Sam Lyman says the choice facing America is not between AI or no AI but between American AI or Chinese AI – just as it is between continued Chinese dominance over critical minerals or an America-first mining and processing renaissance.
The Trump Administration’s push for nuclear energy both for the grid and for stand-alone units to power cloud and hyperscale data centers, military facilities, and remote industrial sites is part of a national strategy to expand electric generation without injuring ratepayers – an effort that had quietly begun during his first term.
After years of neglect, just before leaving office President Biden issued Executive Order 14141 (Advancing U.S. Leadership in AI Infrastructure), which authorized leasing federal sites for gigawatt-scale data centers “with clean energy resources” to prevent public rate increases.
At the signing ceremony for the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, many of the nation’s largest AI and technology companies agreed to cover the costs of all new power generation for their facilities so as not to negatively impact ratepayers.
White House AI and Crypto advisor David Sacks contrasted this “common sense” approach over Bernie Sanders’ demand for a total ban on new data centers, which he said would halt a nationwide construction boom, stunt wage and job growth for blue-collar workers, and effectively cede the future to the Chinese.
Even better, Sacks said that, by allowing AI companies to pay for grid upgrades and sell excess power back to the grid, ratepayers might even see lower bills.
The only problem is that small modular reactors are just now undergoing testing and still have to work their way through a still-labyrinthine permitting process – the legacy of decades of anti-nuclear opposition.
As new data centers begin to generate their own off-grid electricity, the feared escalation of electricity bills should subside. But what about water use?
Most big data centers rely on water-based cooling towers or evaporative chillers to prevent server overheating and equipment failure. While many are using closed-loop water cooling in which the same water circulates in sealed pipes or coils that prevent evaporation, a technique that cuts water use by up to 70%, the public still sees them as stealing their drinking water.
Direct-to-chip cooling, which pipes cold liquid directly to servers, and immersion cooling, which submerges entire servers in a bath of non-conductive fluid, also minimize water use.
Norway is siting data centers near cold-water rivers and fjords, and in cold climates outside air can also keep servers running smoothly. Elon Musk is moving data centers into orbit, connecting them via satellite and Starlink, and requiring no cooling waters. SpaceX and Nvidia are planning to launch the first orbiting data center by 2028.
The trouble is that, with fast-emerging technology, any delay can result in a catastrophic loss of advantage.
Moratoriums, like that issued by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s move to strip data center projects from his state’s fast-track program (which he created in November 2024), can turn into long-term prohibitions for a short-term problem.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Shawn Regan contrasts the actions of these governors with that of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is in a dogfight reelection campaign. Texas, he says, mostly refined its existing process “to better sort through a chaotic data-center development pipeline without abandoning growth.”
Texas requires an audit for “Batch Zero” projects under consideration for connection to the state’s grid. Developers must disclose expected electricity and water use, plans for on-site generation, cooling systems, tax incentives, and measures to mitigate noise, traffic, and other local impacts.
The contrast could not be clearer. The same fear-based politics that once stalled nuclear power, amplified today by “No Kings” style protests (funded by Singham NGOs), has left some politicians throwing in with the Chinese. Those who agree with President Trump’s vision for American hegemony do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater but need a little help from tech giants who many fear do not serve the public interest.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
