Who's powering nuclear energy's comeback?

NPR | By Darian Woods,

Wailin Wong, Cooper Katz McKim, Kate Concannon

Published November 14, 2024 at 9:02 AM EST

Nuclear energy hasn't been a growing industry in decades. But now, it seems to be making a comeback. This week, the Biden administration announced a goal to triple nuclear energy capacity in the US by 2050. And over the past few months, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all made deals to use nuclear energy to power their artificial intelligence appetites. Today on the show, could nuclear energy work differently this time?

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Darian Woods

Darian Woods is a co-host of The Indicator from Planet Money.

See stories by Darian Woods

Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a co-host of The Indicator from Planet Money.

Cooper Katz McKim

Cooper Katz McKim is an Assistant Producer for NPR's daily economics podcast The Indicator from Planet Money. Before The Indicator, McKim reported at NPR Member stations in South Carolina and Wyoming. At Wyoming Public Radio, he filed stories with NPR's Environment And Energy Collaborative on bankruptcies, carbon capture and economic transition. He's won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Use of Sound. More recently, he's served as a podcast producer at Sports Illustrated and the HISTORY Channel. He graduated from Tufts University and now resides in Denver, Colorado, where he spends his time mountain biking and playing jazz piano. [Copyright 2024 NPR]

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.