At least $80 billion of nuclear reactors will be built across the United States in a partnership with the US government, the three companies involved in the project said on Tuesday.
The plan represents one of the most ambitious US investments in atomic energy in decades, underscoring President Donald Trump's "energy dominance" agenda focused on oil, gas, coal, and nuclear.
It comes as the growth in artificial intelligence data centers boosts US power demand for the first time in two decades.
Under the agreement with Westinghouse Electric, Cameco, and Brookfield Asset Management, the US government will arrange financing and will help gain permits for the plants using Westinghouse reactors.
Building new nuclear plants could be difficult
In return, the US government would be granted a participation interest that, once vested, will allow it to get 20% of any cash distributions in excess of $17.5 billion made by Westinghouse, the companies said.
The companies did not say when the US government's interest would vest, but added that the government must make a final investment decision and enter into agreements to complete construction of the plants.
Building new US nuclear reactors has been difficult as costs have soared. The last two US reactors built at the Vogtle site in Georgia in 2023 and 2024, were about seven years behind schedule and cost about $35 billion, more than double an original estimate of $14 billion. No large reactors are currently under construction.
Critics raise issue of waste disposal
Critics of nuclear power also point to the fact that there is no permanent US repository for radioactive waste, which remains dangerous for thousands of years. It is currently kept on site at nuclear plants in cooling pools and then moved into hard casks.
Still, momentum around nuclear power is being driven by surging round-the-clock power demand from the so-called hyperscalers that operate massive cloud-computing infrastructure to manage rising artificial-intelligence processing.
On Monday, NextEra Energy and Google struck a deal to restart an idle nuclear plant in Iowa.
As part of the new partnership, the government may also require Westinghouse to make a public offering of its shares if a participation interest vests and the company reaches a valuation of $30 billion or more by January 2029, the companies said.
Cameco shares jump more than 15% premarket
Cameco and Brookfield Renewable Partners completed the $7.9 billion acquisition of Westinghouse in 2023, including debt. Brookfield Business Partners had previously acquired the company from Toshiba Corp out of bankruptcy in 2018 for $4.6 billion.
US-listed shares of Cameco rose more than 15% in premarket trading.
The agreement follows Trump's May executive order promoting nuclear energy and aims to increase reactor capacity by 5 gigawatts by 2030.
The new units will feature Westinghouse's advanced nuclear technology.
Tech giants, including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, have already inked deals to source power from next-generation nuclear technologies, such as fusion and small modular reactors.
Constellation Energy CEG.O and Microsoft have partnered to revive a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to power Microsoft's data centers.