HGP’s plan includes a revenue share with the government, and the company would create a decommissioning fund, according to Bloomberg.
The alternative? After a lengthy decommissioning process, the reactors are shipped to a remote storage facility in Washington state together dust along with dozens of other retired nuclear reactors.
So the carrier itself isn’t going to be turned into a data center, but its power plants are being proposed for a data center on land. And even with the lengthening decommissioning process, that’s still faster than building a nuclear power plant from scratch.
Don’t hold your breath, says Kristen Vosmaer, managing director, JLL Work Dynamics Data Center team. The idea of converting USS Nimitz’s nuclear reactors to power AI data centers sounds compelling but faces insurmountable obstacles, he argues.
“Naval reactors use weapons-grade uranium that civilian entities cannot legally possess, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has no pathway to license such facilities. Even setting aside the fuel issue, these military-designed systems would require complete reconstruction to meet civilian safety standards, eliminating any cost advantages over purpose-built nuclear plants,” Vosmaer said.
The maritime concept itself, however, does have some merit, said Vosmaer. “Ocean cooling can reduce energy consumption compared to land-based data centers, and floating platforms offer positioning flexibility that fixed facilities cannot match,” Vosmaer said.
