Data Centers Using Nuclear Power: One Campus With a Live Contract, 35 GW of Deals, Zero New Reactors Running

Data centers using nuclear power: as of November 2, 2026, one named US campus has a nuclear contract in force, Amazon’s site beside Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna plant. None runs on a reactor built for it. Announced deals total 34,936 MW, but 6,917 MW is output from reactors already running, and none of the other 28,019 MW is operating.

How many data centers use nuclear power?

The answer depends on the definition, and most published counts do not state one. Under the strictest useful test, a named data center with a nuclear supply contract confirmed in force in a primary document, the count is one. Talen’s August 2026 10-Q says the revised AWS contract took effect in April 2026, while its annual report expected a full front-of-the-meter transition in spring 2027. Talen also does not publish how many megawatts are flowing today, only that the schedule ramps to full volume no later than 2032.

Meta could become the second. Vistra anticipated first deliveries from Perry and Davis-Besse in late 2026, but its latest 10-Q, filed August 10, does not confirm a start, so we do not count it. In the binding documents we read, the only sites named below state level are the Susquehanna campus and Google’s Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama, data centers, which Hermes 2 will serve through TVA from 2030. Any data center on a grid with reactors also draws some nuclear electricity, which cannot be counted from public data. For where US data centers sit, see our data centers by state atlas.

Do data centers have nuclear reactors?

Not today, in any US project we could document. Amazon bought the Susquehanna campus and related assets for $650 million in March 2024, but Talen runs the plant next door, and the deal was restructured to flow across the grid. Aalo says it will power a Crusoe modular data center in 2027 as a proof of concept, and describes that as the first of its kind, which supports the zero. Fermi has proposed four AP1000 units on its Amarillo campus, but its NRC page shows the third part of the application targeted for December 31, 2026, and every safety review date as TBD.

How many data centers can a nuclear power plant handle?

Campus sizes are rarely disclosed, so this table uses one that is: Fermi’s TensorWave lease, 222 MW of facility power with an option to reach 650 MW. We assume the campus runs at full load and each plant at the 91.1% capacity factor EIA reports for the US fleet in 2025. By that math Crane covers about 3.4 campuses of 222 MW, or 1.2 at 650 MW. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 176 TWh for all US data centers in 2023 equals about 20.1 GW of average load, which would take about 26 Cranes.

Our arithmetic from cited MW. Applying a fleet capacity factor to unbuilt designs is an assumption. One lease is an example, not an industry average.

What changed most recently

The past five weeks moved money and paper, not electrons. Amazon and Google signed 1,080 MW of uprates at Constellation between September 30 and October 6, DOE offered conditional commitments of up to $9.2 billion across Vistra and Constellation, and Amazon added a 960 MW Indiana feasibility project. At Palisades, the plant setting the pace for restarts, the NRC issued an exigent amendment on October 13 so Holtec can recover a tilted fuel assembly.

Every project, by NRC stage

Only 6,450 MW is under active NRC review, and 5,000 MW of that is Fermi’s application, which is not yet complete. The largest group, 19,510 MW, has no application and no filing date, and 12,000 MW of it is one framework with Switch. The one project holding a construction permit is 50 MW.

The tracker

Duane Arnold’s 615 MW includes 50 MW for CIPCO; NextEra does not state Google’s share separately. Kairos’s 500 MW fleet is split into Hermes 2 and the remaining 450 MW so it is not double counted. Fermi’s 5,000 MW is its 1 GW first unit plus up to 4.0 GW for Units 2 to 4; its 10-K also cites 6.0 GW with later SMRs, not counted.

Existing, restarting and uprated reactors account for 10,006 MW, 29% of the total, and nearly all of the 10,056 MW under binding contract. Designs with no commercial unit operating account for 17,830 MW, and two-thirds of that is the Switch framework. Meta’s up to 6.6 GW, Google’s over 1.5 GW and Constellation’s approximately 1,080 MW all reconcile with these rows.

Named, but not in the totals

Trackers also list Crusoe and Blue Energy (Port of Victoria, TX), Equinix and Radiant, NuScale and Standard Power, Deep Fission and Endeavour, Sabey and TerraPower, GridMarket and Deployable Energy, and Last Energy in Texas. We did not read a primary document for these in this update, so they are not counted or described here.

What remains before each type can start

Restarts: 1,450 MW, and the Palisades warning

Crane and Duane Arnold each need an exemption from 10 CFR 50.82 and three license amendments, covering the license and technical specifications, the security plan, and the emergency plan. The NRC page for Crane, last updated October 8, shows final documentation blank on all four, with additional-information requests issued September 18 and 25. Staff expects decisions by March 4, 2027, and by January 29, 2028 for Duane Arnold. Each review is budgeted at about 5,540 staff and contractor hours. Crane also needs FEMA review and a full-participation emergency exercise, and PJM’s study found contingent transmission upgrades with dates as late as December 2030. FERC granted a waiver in June 2026 that Constellation filed to reduce them.

Uprates: 1,639 MW, none filed

The NRC’s pending uprates page, updated September 15, 2026, says there are no applications under review. Its expected list shows 31 units and about 2,421 MWe through 2032, with Constellation’s plant names withheld and its first extended uprate filing due in Q4 2026. These deals equal 68% of that expected total, and 20% of the 8 GWe from all 172 uprates approved since 1977. Constellation describes its work as raising “thermal and electrical efficiency”, and no document splits how many MW need a license amendment, so some may not pass through this queue.

New reactors: 24,930 MW, one permit

Hermes 2 is the only data-center-linked reactor with a construction permit. That page, updated October 29, still describes two 35 MWt test reactors, while Kairos now plans one reactor at 50 MW. Meta’s Natrium units and Amazon’s Xe-100 units depend on reference plants that are themselves unfinished: Kemmerer 1 holds a permit but needs a separate operating license, and X-energy expects Long Mott’s permit in the first quarter of 2027. Oklo says it is evaluating the timing and form of future NRC applications while pursuing DOE authorization in Idaho.

Licenses that end before the contracts do

Restarting a plant does not extend its license. Crane’s ends in 2034, about seven years into a 20-year PPA, and Duane Arnold’s ends in 2034, about five years into a 25-year PPA. Of the 8 reactor sites below, at least 4 need a further renewal to reach the end of their contract, and Perry would fall about a year short on our estimate.

The Susquehanna lesson at FERC

The first deal shows how the contract form changed. On November 1, 2024, FERC rejected an amended agreement that would have raised co-located load at Susquehanna from 300 MW to 480 MW. In June 2025, Talen and Amazon replaced it with a larger 1,920 MW front-of-the-meter PPA, which moves the load onto the grid, and Talen dropped its appeal in January 2026. On December 18, 2025, FERC found PJM’s tariff unjust and unreasonable on co-located load, and it issued a further order on June 18, 2026.

Stated target dates by year

Best case by construction. Only the first Google uprate is dated, and we place all 890 MW in 2028. Cascade’s “early 2030s” is placed in 2031. These are targets, not forecasts.

How that compares with data center load growth

LBNL’s report to Congress puts US data center electricity at 176 TWh in 2023 and 325 to 580 TWh in 2028, a rise of 149 to 404 TWh. Crane alone would produce about 6.7 TWh a year. Even with every Google uprate by 2028, the best case of 1,725 MW produces 13.8 TWh, which is 3.4% to 9.2% of that rise. Output from all 6,917 MW of existing reactors, about 55 TWh, is larger but already on the grid, and equals 7.0% of the 98.4 GW US fleet in EIA’s 2025 table.

Federal loans behind the projects

What this means for MSPs

Do not plan around this power before 2030. A three-year client contract signed today ends in late 2029, when the best case is 2,390 MW of new nuclear, against LBNL’s projected rise of 149 to 404 TWh by 2028. Capacity and price planning belongs with the numbers in our AI energy consumption ledger and our data center electricity prices test, not with this tracker.

Question any “nuclear-powered” claim. If a colocation or cloud vendor uses the phrase, ask for the plant, the MW, the contract start date and the NRC docket. Six of the binding lines reassign output from reactors already running, or add credits, as Google’s Georgia Power tariff does, and neither puts a reactor behind your client’s rack.

Do not pick a region for this. With one named campus and contracts written at PJM or state level, no public document lets a client buy nuclear by choosing a cloud region. Clients with reporting duties should use the provider’s published figures, and our data center statistics cover the wider load picture.

If a client asks, these dated checkpoints will show whether the schedule holds:

• Nov 23, 2026Fermi draft EIS comments close
• Q4 2026Constellation’s first extended uprate filing, per the NRC list
• Dec 31, 2026Fermi’s application Part 3 target; X-energy’s Cascade permit filing target by year end
• Q1 2027X-energy’s expected Long Mott permit
• Mar 4, 2027NRC decisions on Crane
• Mar 2027Holtec’s commitment date to its Palisades buyers
• Jan 29, 2028NRC decisions on Duane Arnold

Frequently asked questions

How many data centers use nuclear power?

One named US campus has a nuclear supply contract in force as of November 2, 2026: Amazon’s campus beside the Susquehanna plant in Pennsylvania, under a Talen contract of up to 1,920 MW. Beyond that, 12 other binding contract lines with 4 buyers are signed but start later, and most name a region, not a building. Any data center on a grid with reactors draws some nuclear electricity, which cannot be counted.

Do data centers have nuclear reactors?

No data center in our tracker has a reactor on site powering it today. The closest plans are Aalo’s proof of concept with a Crusoe modular data center in 2027 and four AP1000 units proposed at Fermi’s Project Matador campus, whose combined license review has no safety schedule yet. Amazon’s Susquehanna campus sits next to a reactor plant it does not own.

How many data centers can a nuclear power plant handle?

Using one disclosed campus size, Fermi’s 222 MW TensorWave lease, Crane’s 835 MW at the 91.1% fleet capacity factor covers about 3.4 such campuses, or 1.2 campuses at the 650 MW expansion size. Crane’s output equals about 3.8% of all US data center electricity use in 2023, so about 26 Cranes would be needed to match that year.

Which companies have nuclear deals for data centers?

Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft hold the 13 binding contract lines we counted, totaling 10,056 MW. Crusoe, Fermi and Switch appear in development-stage or non-binding arrangements. Meta’s own total of up to 6.6 GW reconciles with its 2,609 MW from Vistra, 1,200 MW from Oklo and 2,800 MW from TerraPower.

Is Three Mile Island back online for Microsoft?

No. Unit 1, now the Crane Clean Energy Center, remains in decommissioned status. The NRC expects final decisions on its exemption and three license amendments by March 4, 2027, and Constellation states a 2027 restart. NRC Amendment 307 of July 1, 2026 only lets the plant receive new fuel.

When will small modular reactors power data centers?

The earliest firm-contract date is 2030, for Kairos Power’s 50 MW Hermes 2 plant, which holds a construction permit but has no operating license. Aalo and Crusoe plan a 2027 proof of concept and 50 MWe plants by the end of 2029 under a separate path. X-energy expects Amazon-backed reactors in the early 2030s.

Methodology

References

1. Talen 10-Q, Q2 2026. Accessed November 2026.
2. Talen 8-K, Jun 2025. Accessed November 2026.
3. Talen 2025 annual report. Accessed November 2026.
4. NRC Susquehanna 1. Accessed November 2026.
5. Vistra 10-Q, Q2 2026. Accessed November 2026.
6. NRC Comanche Peak 1. Accessed November 2026.
7. NRC Comanche Peak 2. Accessed November 2026.
8. Vistra 8-K, Jan 2026. Accessed November 2026.
9. NRC Davis-Besse. Accessed November 2026.
10. Constellation, Jun 2025. Accessed November 2026.
11. Constellation, Dec 2025. Accessed November 2026.
12. Constellation letter to NRC, Oct 2026. Accessed November 2026.
13. Constellation, Sep 2026. Accessed November 2026.
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19. Constellation 10-Q, Q2 2026. Accessed November 2026.
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22. NRC schedule letter, ML26082A006. Accessed November 2026.
23. Duane Arnold hearing petition, ML26173A206. Accessed November 2026.
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