Power-hungry AI, if not fueled by nuclear power, has the potential to stress the electric grid and increase electricity prices for consumers.

For the first six months of this year, electricity generation, demand, and prices all hit record highs. And the growing demand will only continue. America’s challenge is to prevent prices from continuing to rise, too.

This hunger is coming from the wave of new data centers behind AI, which consume massive amounts of electricity. The preferred energy source for them is nuclear, which provides reliable, twenty-four-seven electricity that data center operators crave.

The Bank of America Institute predicts electricity demand to grow by 2.5 percent per year on average for the next ten years in the United States, versus a mere 0.5 percent in the past decade. Much of the demand will be driven by data centers and AI.

McKinsey predicts that data center power consumption around the world will more than quadruple between 2023 and........

© The National Interest