Inside the AI Revival of the Infamous Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant

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1:46This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. You mentioned one of the most read stories on Bloomberg. It's about the Three Mile Islands AI makeover. It's all in a Bloomberg Business Week exclusive about the energy demand largely fueled by the AI data center build out. and yeah, it's happening not too far from here at Three Mile Island.

2:24Yeah, it's that Three Mile Island, you know. Remember, go back to March 28th, 1979, 36 seconds after 4 a.m. water pumps feeding the steam generators of one of Three Mile Islands, two reactors shut down, kicking off a series of mechanical failures and human errors that would cascade into a partial core meltdown, excuse me, and the release of radioactive gases into the air. The accident was front page news around the world. Partially shut down at the time. It was fully shut down in 2019 for economic reasons, but the economic times, Tim, have certainly changed. And that's the gist of Bloomberg's Will Wade and Drake Bennett's most recent story.

2:59An exclusive. Will is Bloomberg News Energy reporter. He joins us here in the studio. So lots of detail in here about the rebirth to nuclear. I want to start with just what happened in 1979 and that nuclear disaster here in the U.S. I was surprised to learn reading your story that even people who had been exposed in the area to what was released as a result of that, according to a study, really only received as much radiation as would happen in a chest X-ray. Less, actually. Less. Yeah, significantly less. I mean, obviously, it was a huge public relations disaster for the nuclear industry. And that led to all kinds of heightened oversight, new safety policies, lots of scrutiny.

3:45It really slowed down the nuclear industry in the U.S. And it was justifiably a disaster. People were terrified. Thousands and thousands of people fled the area. But when they eventually went and studied it and measured it, the amount of radiation that was released was not deadly. It was not huge. But just the idea of radiation is terrifying to everybody. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't feel it. Then you don't know what's happening. It's scary. And yet, here we are in 2026, Will. And I feel like in the last couple of years, we've done nothing. I think about that NJIT event that we did.

4:23and we did a panel up at stage and what they wanted to talk about. Probably 2022, 2023. It's a few years. Yeah. Nuclear. And I think it caught us by surprise. You've been talking about it and reporting it out here. Is the whole difference just the big tech community, the AI craze, and the demand for power? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, for a while, nuclear was really kind of waning, but mostly because it's expensive. These plants are big. They're complicated. It takes a long time to build. Like I just said, there's tons of scrutiny. so they're expensive to build and operate so until about like 2019 2020 2022 they were just shutting down for economic reasons they were just more expensive you could get cheap natural gas you get cheap wind and solar but now we need electricity and it is it's big tech it's ai they need these data centers just need so much electricity and they want it as fast as they can get it.

5:21And they want as much as they can get. And nuclear can deliver a lot of power. Well, you point out in the piece, this is not just about the United States. I mean, there are countries all over the world that moved away from nuclear in Europe, Japan, after Fukushima. And now they've all changed their minds, too. They haven't all changed their minds. Germany is still... Many of them have changed their minds. Excuse me. Thank you. I've been tracking this for a long time. There's been a huge reversal. And people really are starting to embrace nuclear. I mean, not everyone in the world, but it's really getting a lot of acceptance.

5:54And I should point out, I mean, there's Three Mile Island, there's Chernobyl, there's Fukushima. Oh, that's it. There have been three major accidents. How does that compare to... But Chernobyl was really bad. Chernobyl was really bad. I don't want to downplay it. Fukushima was really bad. Fukushima was really bad, but Nobody died from radiation. They died from the flooding. But Chernobyl, like we've seen, you know, that whole area, just nothing. Yeah, that's true. You know, so when it goes bad, it goes bad. When it goes bad, it goes bad big. Yeah. Which is why it is so heavily regulated. And we looked at some death statistics because, I mean, let's be real.

6:36Living on this planet will kill you. If you live next to a coal power plant, you're probably, you know, more likely to get asthma. Natural gas has things. Everything is dangerous. So then how do you quantify that danger and those dangers from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity to using nuclear energy? There's been some studies and they really do come down. Like coal has a lot more deaths per like terawatt hour power produced. Natural gas has more deaths. Nuclear power, even including the deaths from Chernobyl, much, much lower on the scale. I'm going to just randomly say this, but I'm assuming you get into a car and you probably are more likely to get in an accident than a nuclear.

7:19That's what I mean. This planet is dangerous for us. What I want to ask you about is Microsoft, its vast power needs. And this is kind of like the subtitle on the story and how it's bringing together two transformative and risky technologies. Will I always get nervous when there is such demand and a rush and need for something that I wonder if people get sloppy in the development process? Now, I realize everybody's got to be careful because if there's one problem, it will shut down the industry again, probably. Certainly the U.S. Fully legitimate question. Okay. So what's going on that's risky?

7:51That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, like you said, Chernobyl was indeed a catastrophe. With nuclear, I've been to several nuclear plants, and everywhere I go, it is just so carefully monitored and screened. But, you know, radiation does have, you know, the potential to be dangerous. So you have to be careful. Go ahead, Tim. Well, what I noticed in your piece was that there was this idea that electricity demand had kind of peaked because we had become more efficient with energy usage. LED bulbs were, you know, actually a part of that pre-2019. And then this happened. And by this, I mean the demand for AI.

8:35And I'm wondering about the possibility of overbuilding here, because what if it turns out that all of these technologies do become more efficient? Because that's the big bottleneck right now. So you have to think that that's what everybody is working toward, making this stuff more efficient. What happens if we overbuild here and we just shoot too far? But then we spent a lot of money. Yeah, that's the question that we've been talking about. So, I mean, power demand in the U.S. has pretty much been flat for like 20-something years. And now it's going up. Like the projections are insane on how much power we're going to need.

9:09There's a chart in the show. Projections are projections, though. Exactly. So, I mean, like here in like second quarter, 2026, it's not crazy higher than a year ago. But the forecast through 2030 and 2035, they are. But, yeah, AI is brand new. This is like a trend I've been following for about two years. But if they come up with a way to make it more energy efficient all of a sudden, that is a concern. And people are, like, allocating billions and billions of dollars for power plants. And if they overspend, well, we'll see it in the stock price. The next generation, though, just to wrap up here, we've talked about the SMRs, the small modular reactors, this kind of next generation of technologies.

9:50Right now we're doing a lot of, like, existing facilities getting them up and running. There's three. So how long is that? And is that going to be even more efficient, more safer? But what's the timeline? The timeline on SMR is I'm going to go with like early 2030s, maybe a couple before 2030. There's dozens of companies that are working on them. There's like maybe a half dozen company I could name that are making really solid progress and they're not that far away. Right. But it's going to take some time. And the first ones are not going to be cheap. All right. So we got to be patient. Anyway, it's just it fits into this big narrative that we keep talking about every day.

10:30It's just the spend on building up these data centers. But folks are worried about is a supply chain there and is the energy there to actually fuel them. We'll wait. Thank you. So appreciate it. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this. What if you could have even more and more and more help to pursue your goals? At LPL Financial, we offer more ways for advisors and their clients to thrive. So what if you could? Paid advertisement investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. LPL Financial LLC member FINRA SIPC. On June 10th, Bloomberg Invest is back in Hong Kong.

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11:45Or watch us live on YouTube. Joining us in the studio, Christelle Randulin, the co-CEO at Vontobel. It's a global wealth management firm. They've got approximately$240 billion Swiss francs in assets under management. That's about$308 billion US. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Businessweek studio. Do you see the momentum continuing? That's a timing question. What I see is that the macro is very resilient. And there's no reason for the stocks to turn down for as long as we have such a resilient macro economy. We have, of course, AI is super powerful. You know, I'm starting to think that AI feels a little bit like QE.

12:23It's almost like unconditional liquidity coming to the market all the time. QE can cause too much. You can cause too much. Liquidity can cause problems. Exactly. And that's the conversation we want to have with our clients is don't get lulled into it. But that brings up a lot of questions about the association or the ramifications of increased productivity. And that has to do with fewer people. And if there are fewer people needed, then fewer people will be working. And it opens up this whole question about what that economy ends up looking like. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, honestly, this is really still far out.

12:56So we're going to take it one after the other. For now, what we're seeing, and you can't disentangle, you know, the normal economy with what's already coming from AI. But what you see is unemployment rates are still low. The growth is still strong. And so let's take it one at a time. Are you talking unemployment? U.S. specifically? Unemployment U.S. And you know, on this, you have to also put against the AI trend that's allegedly going to take out so many jobs. The fact that the demographics in most parts of the world, let's say of the developed world, are also pretty negative. So, I'll wait and see a little bit on this one.

13:32Christelle, you guys are a global wealth management firm. You're based in Switzerland, right? And I'm just curious, you know, I'm looking at the MSCI World Index up about 7 % year to date. World Index, XUS up about 6.5%. S &P is up 8 % year to date. The NASDAQ 100 is up 15 % year to date. Merging markets are up 22 % year to date. I didn't even break it down in terms of European markets and so on and so forth. You can presumably look at the world. Which parts of the world do you like the most? What I like the most? Diversification. Honestly, that is the conversation to be had. So what is diversification from a global perspective?

14:10So I'll tell you what, what is the conversation that I want to have with the clients is about three C's, concentration, currency, custody. And the concentration is that we have one of the largest market in the world, the U S equity market, which has a third of its valuation in seven stocks. That's a historical high. And that trend is so powerful that you actually find it, it ripples into other asset classes. You have corporate debt from tech firms now. You know, when I left managing fixed income, there was no debt from tech firms. And now there is actually quite a substantial amount. Is that a problem though?

14:47I mean, great. The debt markets largely seem to like it, right? Their investor interests. But I do get a little nervous. These guys have deep pockets, lots of money. I don't know. You know, it's not a problem per se. It's just as an investor, you don't want to have all your eggs on one theme only. So pick your theme. And if I picked one, I'd pick the equity part probably for the AI because it's a growth story. So underweight or overweight U.S.? Oh, what did you say? Underweight or overweight U.S.? Neutral? Can I say that? Yeah, you can say neutral. Yeah, I'd say neutral, to be honest. I'd say neutral, but I wouldn't be underweight.

15:22So it's a neutral positive for some of you. So are you then skewed? Because I know what you said about market concentration here in the U.S., but you like the AI play. So are you skewed, though, towards those big tech names? This is not, in a sense, I mean, that is a very, it's a very hard call to be made. I think what I'm skewed toward is saying the macro theme is real. You don't want to over concentrate around that. And that are the conversation. This is precisely the conversation we're having with the clients is where do you express that view? How much and what other asset classes, other geographies, other currencies you want to hold?

15:58because ultimately, remember, the key call for your wealth is how you allocate across assets, geographies, etc. It's the most underrated call. Even with the decline of energy prices that we've seen in the past few days, oil is still up more than 65 % this year. Could that derail what you view as a resilient macro environment? It could if it lasts long enough. And I don't know, you're going to ask me how long is this too long? I don't know either. We'll know what it is.

16:57It will have an impact on the economy. Is there another market that you like, though? I am curious. We've talked a lot about defense spending that seems to be increasing throughout Europe and other places. You like it. It's very clear. You do like the U.S. market. But you're kind of neutral. I like the fixed incomes as well, to be honest. Because I didn't buy that argument in 2022. This is the end of 60-40. I feel like it never goes away, even though people talk about it. It was a nice reminder that rates can go up. And in that period, when you cool the economy, everything goes down at the same time.

17:31It doesn't mean you don't want to do without. And the other part that I like is, can you do something with the volatility in the market? And I think you can. I think we have to run. We've got to run. Hope you're back soon. We would love to continue this. A really good conversation. Christelle, thank you so much. My pleasure. Christelle Randu-DeLint. She is, of course, co-CEO at Vontobel. It is a global wealth management based in Switzerland. but she found our way. She's spending New York this week. She's heading home soon, but glad she made a stop with us. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.

18:07You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. The story of the New York Times today grabbing our attention. The headline, how energy prices are driving demand for solar panels and heat pumps. Yeah, I mean, it's about the sales of EVs, heat pumps, solar panels. They are surging over in Europe. And this is all, it makes sense, Tim. It's a result of those higher energy prices that is caused by the U.S. war in Iran. On that, we've got with us Daniel Barcelo.

18:42He's chairman and CEO of the renewables energy equipment manufacturing company T1 Energy. The firm has a market cap of around$1.6 billion. dollars shares this year down around 15 he joins us here in the bloomberg interactive brokers studio welcome how are you i great thanks for having me how so the european demand is certainly one story in the u.s there's a different story playing out because there's not as much support from the federal government uh from the central government uh as there is in other parts of the world and as there have been in the past how is that and what does that mean for for where you said.

19:15Yeah, I actually think the U.S. has been very supportive and is currently still supportive of even renewable energy. I tend to think of T1 energy and renewable energy as the wrong word almost. It's just energy. I spent decades in oil and gas. Solar is just a form of it. It is extremely competitive on a cost basis. It is rapid to scale, and it's what we need. When you look back at Europe a few years ago when they had the whole crisis with Russia and natural gas prices, you had extreme pain there. How can you say the U.S. is supportive right now, given the president? I mean, look, the president, it seems like he hates windmills the most and wind energy the most.

19:50But he really likes coal, and he's ordered the Pentagon to buy coal power. OBBBA kept in place incentives for batteries. But with a lot of fighting from lawmakers to try to keep that language in there. That was a challenging part at the end of that in July. And T1 was involved there, and we were pushing to say, look, we need certain support here in order to levelize, particularly the capital formation of it. Because I do think when you get these assets running in the U.S., they're extremely competitive. Because a lot of these assets, particularly in solar manufacturing, it's a function of electricity prices as an input, water, specialty gases.

20:29So you can have OPEX, cash OPEX costs that are extremely competitive. The U.S. still struggles on a levelized cost in terms of CapEx because when you're building in America, it's expensive. There's fire code. There's OSHA code. Of course, you have to do things the right way and build the right way. But we build very slow in America, and we build very expensively. So I really think the story here is about how do we build manufacturing capacity, bring jobs back, and bring the production of the solar assets into the United States. Well, Dan, some might say if you want to ask how it's done, just ask China.

21:00Like, how do we think about China in the midst of all of this? And whether or not, you know, what they do in terms of pricing and market destruction, we could have a debate about that. But what are you watching in terms of what China is doing and their position in this world and what the U.S. needs to do to also be super competitive? China, and for that matter, Southeast Asia, is extremely competitive on manufacturing. In the solar and storage space, it is a manufacturing play rather than a drilling play, rather than an ore extraction play. And for America to take back that manufacturing, I think is the right step to do.

21:36We did that by purchasing our asset in Dallas from a leading, Trina Solar leading company at the time. We bought it, we own it. Now we run it. We're building, we build modules, which is the panel. Now we're building the cells, which go into the panel and we're bringing that in. You know, we're doing that. Do you want to be vertical? Is that what, or? We have a partnership with Corning and with Hemlock, Hemlock Semiconductor, Sellsless Poly, Corning will sell us wafers. We're focused on the cell level and the module level right now. That's where our main focus is. And look, when we look at the announcement from Elon from about a few months ago, where he's saying he wanted to do 100 gigawatts over 18 months, that is a clear signal of how manufacturing has to come back into the space, into solar.

22:18You're building this massive solar plant in Austin, made in America, solar cells. When will those actually roll off the line? We expect to start production by the end of this year. Okay. We've started production late last year. We have equipment coming in. Sites down, foundations good. You know, we're tracking so far. So starting production at the end of this year? Does that mean that those will be rolling off the line at the end of this year? Yes. Okay. Well, one of the things we wanted to ask you is, I think just looking at some data, renewables are expected to be over 90 % of U.S. utility additions in 2026 this year.

22:55What does the American energy landscape look like, in your view, five years from now? Particularly solar and storage, it was about 80 % of the net electricity grid in the last two years. That's a phenomenal number. And I think that's going to continue because it's scalable. It's speed to market, speed to market, speed to market. I like to say that before in oil and gas or in energy, we were always governed by technology, 3D seismic fracking, and all this incredible technology to help drill. But now technology is driven by how much energy you can get on the grid as fast as possible. One part is generation.

23:32The other part is transmission, which is a different part. But in terms of the generation, solar and storage, storage can move the time around the solar. It just adds tremendous generation to the grid fast. So five years from now, what do you think the energy here in the landscape look like in America? A combination of natural gas and solar and storage will dominate the American power grid. I think nuclear will stay where it was. Maybe we'll have more advancements than SMRs as you go out longer term. But when you look last 20, 30, 40 years, you've seen nuclear kind of pinned where it is. We're not going to have more hydro.

24:06You don't buy into the hype around nuclear today? Or interest, I should say? I think there's a lot of complexity and regulatory aspects and cost structures and ongoing parts for it. America hasn't had the growth in nuclear that they've seen for decades. Look what natural gas did. It took coal down from over 50 % in 20 years. It did that through risk-taking, capital investments, fracking, and it was distributable. You could put natural gas turbines anywhere you wanted. Well, it comes down to, at some point, math, right, Tim? You look at the different prices and costs of things. And that's exactly it.

24:41And one can argue that, oh, subsidies helped on the capex side or not but when you get to levelized cost of energy and bringing it out solar and storage prices have come down to around the prices of where natural gas is whenever you're saying storage you're just saying batteries right correct okay how much has the technology improved and how much will it improve in the next few years so these batteries become less expensive they're less reliant on critical minerals that are difficult to come by critical materials that are difficult to come by uh because they're very expensive right now the world the world has shifted a lot from nmc towards lfp which removes cadmium and uh and other um wait what are those acronyms mean or uh lithium iron phosphate removing nickel uh manganese cobalt okay so cobalt in terms of having uh we'll say more toxicity and and issues there okay so so when you switched from nmc to lfp batteries uh you've actually seen now to your answer some more abundant minerals so less of a concern when you're getting into to that what about the cost the pricing has collapsed so you you've seen pricing of batteries go from 150 a kilowatt all the way down below 50 at the cell level that has come through with a massive amount of supply out of asia and china do how much lower does that go um like is it is it like chips and sort of technology like law type thing i i was going to go into that yeah it's just it's just grinding down you know we we were in the battery space before we pivoted to solar and when you look left you see samsung and then this way you got lg and then you got catl the big chinese and then you got panasonic and then oh here's tesla i mean the dominance of those players to just grind down grind down grind down battery technology in the solar space which has historically been old chinese you see the same grinding down what's very also interesting i noticed you coming on the semiconductor space There is this large connection of semiconductors being polysilicon-based and solar being supportive of the industry from a poly perspective as well.

26:39Cool stuff. Come back soon. We really love it. Dan Borcello, Chairman and CEO of the Renewables Energy Equipment Manufacturing Company, T1 Energy, joining us. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.