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Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

AI’s Power Boom Could Pull Factory-Built Nuclear Down the Cost Curve

October 14, 2026 • Tom Raftery • Season 1 • Episode 298

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AI data centres are creating an extraordinary new demand for electricity. The harder question is whether clean, firm power can be built quickly enough to meet it, without falling back on gas.

My guest in this episode is Matt Loszak, co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, which is developing small, factory-built nuclear reactors initially for AI data centres. The bet is that nuclear can move from bespoke megaprojects to repeatable manufactured products, cutting deployment time while preserving the reliability these facilities require.

We examine what that shift would actually demand: why standardisation changes nuclear construction, why data centres may provide the high-paying early market needed to bring costs down, and why reaching criticality is very different from proving a commercially viable power plant. We also get into the harder engineering test - operating reliably at high capacity factor, and whether SMRs can scale without recreating the problems of conventional nuclear.

Listen now to hear what factory-built nuclear still has to prove, and why AI’s appetite for power may give it an unusually significant opportunity to do so.

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