Wall Street warms to nuclear power as banks including Goldman Sachs reportedly back new push

• Wall Street appears to be throwing its support behind nuclear energy, The Financial Times reported.
• Some 14 banks, including Goldman Sachs, will back a drive to help triple global nuclear energy supply.
• Tech giants like Microsoft are also turning to nuclear energy to help power data centers.

Big Tech is getting excited about nuclear power — and now Wall Street wants a piece of the action.

14 of the world's largest financial institutions, including US giants Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America, are set to throw their support behind an effort to triple the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, The Financial Times reported on Monday.

The banks, which also include Citi, Barclays and BNP Paribas have not said what steps they will take to help achieve this goal.

However, their involvement could be crucial in helping meet the emissions target laid out in last year's COP28 climate conference and revive the nuclear energy sector.

More details are expected at an event due to be held in New York on Monday.

Once considered the future of clean energy, nuclear power has declined in popularity in recent decades due to governments' reluctance to back expensive infrastructure projects, concerns about its environmental impact, and other factors such as competition from cheap natural gas in the US.

Nuclear accounted for a quarter of Germany's electricity production until 2011, but a change in government policy meant all its plants were shut down by last year.

Nuclear's share of global electricity production dropped to its lowest level since the 1980s last year, per the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

That might soon change, and it's not just Wall Street getting more interested in nuclear power. Big Tech is also increasingly throwing its support behind the technology, as companies seek to power AI systems and data centers while cutting back their carbon emissions.

Microsoft struck a deal last week to reopen one reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which remains best-known for a partial meltdown in 1979.

The tech giant has agreed to buy energy generated by the plant for the next two decades, having invested heavily in AI through its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told investors earlier this month that the energy demand of advanced AI is so "crazy" that his company is building a data center powered by three small nuclear reactors.

"We've found the location and the power place, they've already got building permits for three nuclear reactors," he said on Oracle's first-quarter earnings call.

"These are the small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center. This is how crazy it's getting. This is what's going on."

Rolls-Royce is one of the leading contenders with its small modular reactor designs and has secured development funding of more than £200m from the British government.

Meanwhile, TerraPower, a company cofounded by Bill Gates, is planning a new nuclear power plant in Wyoming.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, sent outside normal working hours. Citi declined to comment.