{{item.videoDuration}}
{{item.title}}
{{item.text}}
{{item.videoDuration}}
{{item.text}}
Key takeaways:
- PwC estimates the US needs to invest $7.8 trillion in power infrastructure by 2050 to modernize the digital economy.
- Nuclear energy has played a role in powering the US for decades and will be a critical baseload for the digital economy.
- Our series identifies how nuclear energy leaders can better assess challenges and build execution confidence faster.
US companies are racing to meet surging energy demand, and nuclear power is increasingly being viewed as a key part of the solution. One of the largest infrastructure investment cycles in decades is being fueled by the rise of AI and the corresponding data center and grid modernization boom with PwC estimating the US will invest a cumulative $32.7 trillion in infrastructure over the next 25 years, with $7.8 trillion directed toward power-related projects.
While the investment thesis is compelling, execution can be formidable. Even before this wave of investment, companies have struggled to successfully deliver complex capital programs and now, the path forward is more challenging: constrained supply chains, a widening workforce gap, an influx of private capital with sharper expectations, and governance structures not yet built for parallel program delivery all threaten to slow momentum. Layer in accelerating demand for round-the-clock baseload, rising energy security expectations, and a significant focus on cost, schedule, and delivery confidence, and the scale of the execution challenge becomes clear.
Nuclear energy has played a role in powering the US for decades, accounting for roughly 19% of electricity generation and is expected to be a critical and growing baseload component for decades into the future. But the question today is how the industry can effectively address the challenges of delivering additional generation while moving at the speed this moment requires.
In the first installment of our nuclear energy series, we examine some of the biggest challenges standing between new nuclear power and the grid. Over the course of this series, we will go deeper on each of these challenges, identifying what’s changing, where programs tend to break, and what “good” looks like in practice so that leaders can better assess options and build execution confidence faster.
Mind the expectation gap
In the execution of complex megaprojects there is often a gap between where challenges are expected and where they actually occur – the expectation gap and this can be even more pronounced in new nuclear generation. Attention typically centers on advanced reactor technology, nuclear-specific systems, and the regulatory environment, but some of the most significant obstacles may be overlooked.
Technology constraints, for example, are often driven less by reactor physics than by engineering maturity and design stability. Supplier readiness goes beyond lead times and manufacturing capacity. It hinges on qualification, traceability, and the ability to deliver nuclear-grade performance consistently. The availability of specialized labor like nuclear-qualified welders, engineers, and craft workers adds another layer of coordination and cost pressure that can be frequently underestimated in early planning. The areas that attract the most attention are not always the ones driving project variances and that mismatch is where execution friction takes hold.
These challenges will likely intensify. As more projects enter the pipeline, the same suppliers, skilled trades, and regulatory resources will be stretched thinner. Schedule windows will narrow, costs will face upward pressure, and the interdependencies between concurrent programs will grow harder to manage. The risk isn't just that individual projects stumble, it's that constraints across capital programs compound faster than the industry's ability to address them.
Nuclear supply chain: some assembly required
Today's nuclear supply chain needs to be reimagined given the variety of designs in the advanced reactor and SMR space coupled with parallel deployments the industry is now pursuing. The demand signals needed to unlock supply chain investment are starting to be sent. Technology companies, hyperscalers, and large industrial energy buyers are moving past expressions of interest into binding offtake agreements, equity investments, and development relationships that give suppliers something the nuclear energy industry has historically lacked: the confidence to invest in expanded capacity.
Fuel is also a potential bottleneck since many advanced reactor designs require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that the US can’t yet produce at commercial scale, and building domestic enrichment capacity will likely take years even with aggressive federal investment.
Project delivery can determine success
The credibility of nuclear energy's resurgence won’t be determined by policy announcements or technology promises, it will be determined by consistent cost and schedule performance on actual construction projects. Nuclear generation construction is among the most capital-intensive infrastructure projects ever undertaken, and their economic viability is overwhelmingly sensitive to upfront capital cost and construction duration. Every month of avoidable delay compounds cost through escalation, extended financing charges, and deferred revenue. During construction, disciplined project management and controls are the primary lever for protecting asset economics and sustaining confidence among investors, ratepayers, and policymakers.
The strategic path from first-of-a-kind to next-of-a-kind to affordable and repeatable fleet deployment depends on capturing granular productivity, cost, and schedule data through rigorous controls and converting it into calibrated estimates and improved execution for subsequent units. Independent oversight, executive fluency in project controls, and a culture of transparent reporting are governance imperatives. Robust project management and controls are not a component of the solution, they are the solution.
Workforce: Who’s going to build all of this?
The scale and complexity of the nuclear industry’s buildout will require a fundamentally different approach to workforce planning. New power generation projects of all types are competing for engineers, planners, schedulers, estimators, project managers, and craft labor with the same data center hyperscalers and advanced manufacturers who will ultimately purchase the electricity. At the same time, the workers who designed and built the existing fleet are in or nearing retirement. According to the Associated General Contractors of America 2025 Workforce Survey, 83% of general contracting firms had craft openings and 45% reported project delays tied to worker shortages.
The challenge is particularly acute in the nuclear sector, where specialized skills and stringent regulatory requirements create an even narrower labor pool. Unlike conventional construction, nuclear projects demand workers with specific certifications including nuclear-grade welding, radiation protection, NRC-regulated quality assurance, and seismic-qualified structural work. These are credentials that take years to develop and cannot be quickly scaled through traditional hiring pipelines. Without a coordinated workforce strategy integrating apprenticeship programs, streamlined credentialing, and public-private partnerships, the industry risks repeating the costly labor-driven delays and budget overruns that have historically plagued large-scale nuclear construction in the United States.
Nuclear’s smartest customer can help
AI is simultaneously nuclear energy's biggest customer and potentially its most powerful tool. The data centers driving the electricity demand behind nuclear energy’s resurgence run on the same AI systems that could transform how plants are designed, built, and operated. Across the capital project life cycle, AI-enabled tools are already proving their value by accelerating design, improving construction sequencing, anticipating predictive maintenance, and sharpening cost and schedule forecasting. With nuclear power, the opportunity spans the full value chain: generative design, digital twins to compress engineering timelines, and machine learning that enhances operations, scheduling, and outage planning.
Going forward, AI agents could help address nuclear energy’s most binding constraints: workforce shortages, supply chain delays, and calls for greater transparency. But this industry is not a typical capital project environment. Safety, security, and quality assurance requirements set a higher bar for trust, governance, and regulatory acceptance. AI agents won't replace human judgment but deployed strategically they can dramatically expand what a constrained workforce is able to deliver.
Lead, innovate, deliver: Extracting greater value from new generation projects
Capital, demand, and policy alignment have created the strongest foundation for nuclear growth in decades. What happens next depends entirely on execution. The challenges are formidable: scaling supply chains, executing complex projects, closing workforce gaps, deploying AI responsibly. The challenges compound when not managed effectively and act as a value multiplier when managed together.
The opportunity to build the next generation of nuclear power is historic and companies that move with discipline, speed, and clear-eyed planning can be the ones that define how it gets delivered.
*Samuel Lederer, Max Bulba, Harrison Liu, and Sam McBride contributed to this article.
Capital projects and infrastructure
Nuclear energy is returning to the spotlight
Infrastructure
Extract greater value from capital asset programs
{{filterContent.facetedTitle}}
{{contentList.loadingText}}
{{contentList.loadingText}}
Contact us
Follow us
