America’s power grid stands at a crossroads, facing surging demands unlike anything in our history. As the nation accelerates efforts to electrify cars, industries, and homes, a new challenge has emerged. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence is fueling explosive growth in data centers, each hungry for constant, reliable electricity. These data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity around the clock, putting added stress on a grid that is already struggling to keep up.
Recent events have revealed serious vulnerabilities in the power grid. These include the 2021 Texas blackout, the 2025 Iberian Peninsula outage, and a near-miss event in Northern Virginia’s data center corridor, during which data centers dropped off the grid. Together, these incidents demonstrate that much of today’s energy infrastructure is not equipped to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.
Today’s electric grid faces unprecedented demands that require a higher standard for resilience, adaptability, and reliability. Addressing these challenges requires energy infrastructure that prioritizes safety, enables rapid and scalable deployment, and provides critical baseload power for essential facilities. NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) technology is designed to address these requirements, providing a flexible energy foundation suited to the needs of the 21st century grid.
To prevent a repeat of these disruptive events, our energy infrastructure requires a fundamental shift toward proactive resilience. This is where the design philosophy behind the NuScale Power Module™ (NPM) provides a distinct advantage. We have engineered our technology with simplicity in mind – eliminating reactor coolant pumps, using skid mounted, easily replaceable turbines, and enabling a robust electrical distribution system. The causes of most inadvertent shutdowns in conventional nuclear plants have been studied and eliminated by design. These features and others create multiple layers of defense to provide a high level of reliability. The goal is to ensure that power is always available, especially when it is needed most.
NuScale’s SMR technology incorporates several features that are crucial during severe grid disruptions, including:
These features, combined with a simplified system design that removes the need for many components found in large conventional nuclear plants, contributes to an expected capacity factor of 95% or greater. This level of performance is essential for a grid that must support continuous, high-demand loads.
The path forward for our energy infrastructure is clear. Escalating demands from electrification and the digital economy, combined with the inherent vulnerabilities of today’s grid, require a new approach to power generation. Aging systems and intermittent resources alone are no longer sufficient to support critical infrastructure. The challenges of the 21st century demand energy solutions that are clean, reliable, and designed for the future.
Building a resilient, 21st century grid is not a distant objective. It is an urgent necessity. The technology to achieve it exists today. NuScale’s small modular reactor technology provides flexible, on-demand power capable of supporting an increasingly electrified society and strengthening long-term energy security.