rewrite this title Nuclear Minds: Why Retired Navy Reactors Are Powering the AI Boom | Metaverse Planet

I’ll be honest with you—when I first read the headline, I checked the calendar. I thought, “Is this an early April Fool’s joke?” But no, HGP Intelligent Energy is dead serious, and they’ve already knocked on the Department of Energy’s door.

The situation is this: AI data centers are consuming so much power that traditional grids are struggling to keep up. The proposed solution? Ripping the nuclear hearts out of retired US warships and planting them on land, right next to the servers.

Let’s dive into the details, the risks, and the promises of this absolute “moonshot” project.

A “Nuclear” Solution to AI’s Insatiable Hunger

We all know that a single ChatGPT query burns significantly more energy than a simple Google search. Data centers have mutated into energy monsters. This is exactly where HGP Intelligent Energy’s plan for the Oak Ridge area comes into play.

The company is essentially saying: “We have these retired Navy reactors that are still beasts. Why throw them away?”

The Goal: Between 450 and 520 megawatts of continuous power.The Scale: Theoretically, this is enough to power 360,000 homes.Reliability: We aren’t talking about solar that stops at night or wind that relies on a breeze; this is 24/7 baseload power.

Which Ships Are Being Cannibalized?

The tech we are talking about here isn’t your average backup generator. These are military marvels designed to survive the harshest conditions on (and under) Earth:

Nimitz-Class Aircraft Carriers: Powered by Westinghouse A4W reactors.Los-Angeles Class Submarines: Powered by General Electric S8G reactors.

Just think about it: machines that once silently prowled the ocean depths or launched fighter jets are now going to sweat to keep your AI assistant running. About a third of the Los Angeles-class subs are already retired. The raw material is sitting there, waiting.

Why Not Just Build New Plants?

When I look at the business side of things, the logic is brutally simple: Time and Money.

Building a nuclear plant from scratch, including permitting, can take 10 to 15 years. The costs are astronomical. However, HGP claims:

Refitting these reactors costs about $1 million to $4 million per Megawatt.The total project cost sits in the $1.8 – $2.1 Billion range.The deployment time is a fraction of new construction.

The Other Side of the Coin: Safety & Engineering

Everything sounds fantastic on paper, but there is a stubborn engineering reality: These reactors were not designed for the electric grid.

A submarine reactor is optimized for propulsion—spinning a propeller, accelerating rapidly, and stopping. They don’t naturally run like a steady-state turbine generating electricity. This is the biggest concern for experts.

Then there is the fuel issue. The uranium used in these military reactors is highly enriched compared to civilian plants. This brings up massive security protocols, regulatory nightmares, and the inevitable question: “What if something goes wrong?”

My Take: A Turning Point?

I find this project fascinating because it shows exactly where we are in the timeline of technology. Transforming war machines into engines for information… It’s a beautiful “swords into plowshares” narrative symbolically. But whether the technical and bureaucratic walls can be breached remains to be seen.

What do you think? Does the idea of a data center near you running on an old nuclear submarine reactor make you feel secure, or does it sound like the intro to a disaster movie?

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