Palantir Embraces Nuclear Power With $100 Million Startup Deal
(Bloomberg) -- The US will need more nuclear power as it enters into greater competition with China, said Mike Gallagher, head of defense at Palantir Technologies Inc.
Palantir inked a deal with the Nuclear Company, a startup working on project development, the companies announced Thursday. The startup will pay data analytics firm Palantir $100 million over the next five years to develop artificial intelligence software specific to the nuclear industry.
The goal is to help build nuclear plants cheaper, safer and most importantly, faster than China, Gallagher said. Of the 61 nuclear power plants currently under construction around the world, 26 are in Russia and 25 in China, BNEF reported this month. None are in the US.
“The fact of the matter is we cannot win this strategic competition with China unless we revitalize our ability to build nuclear technology,” Gallagher said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
In the last 30 years, the US built only two plants, Vogtle Units 3 and 4. In addition to extensive regulation, one reason they took 15 years to build is because of the hundreds of thousands of documents workers must complete when building a new plant, Gallagher, a former US congressman, said.
With Palantir’s software, the Nuclear Company is digitizing the paperwork required to build the last plants, “so that when supply chain delays are happening, our teams on the front lines are aware of it,” said Nuclear Company Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Webb. Webb and Gallagher plan to streamline construction at the startup, which hopes to deliver electricity by the 2030s, though it doesn’t have any plants under construction currently.
In May, President Donald Trump signed executive orders calling for 10 large-scale nuclear reactors to be under construction by 2030 and 400 gigawatts of total nuclear power by 2050, over four times the country’s current atomic energy capacity. In addition to national security, the duo also sees revitalizing the industry as key to defense.
“We need to get back to building, because if we don’t build nuclear power plants, it’s China and Russia that are doing that,” Webb said.
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