Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) –
(As prepared for delivery)
Distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends,
Writers and futurists have long echoed Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s idea that “the future arrives too fast…and in the wrong order.” Today, we know, the speed is exponential.
Two forces are reshaping humanity’s horizon at an unprecedented pace: the rise of artificial intelligence and the global transition towards clean, reliable energy. The world’s energy map is being redrawn before our eyes.
The essential point, our opportunity and our responsibility, is that these forces are not unfolding separately. They are converging and redefining the new global economy.
We can now say with clarity: the AI revolution, through its scale and speed, was always going to choose nuclear energy as a partner. The only question was “when?”. Today, we know that the answer is “now.”
Let me explain why this partnership was inevitable and what it means for every region, every nation, and every person.
Why AI was destined to turn to nuclear energy
All major technological breakthroughs have been linked to new energy backbones: steam engines to coal, electrification to hydro and fossil fuels, digitalisation to gas and renewables, and now AI to clean, uninterrupted power.
AI’s demand for energy is intersecting with two other key global forces: the drive for energy security and the drive to meet environmental and climate goals. These three trends reinforce each other, and together they are determining investments, policies and geopolitics.
Artificial intelligence astonishes us. But beneath the elegant algorithms lies a simple truth:
AI runs on vast, uninterrupted quantities of electricity.
Training a frontier AI model requires tens of thousands of GPUs running continuously for weeks or months. Everyday use is spreading into hospitals, public administration, transport, agriculture, logistics, and education. Each query, each simulation, each recommendation consumes power.
And not just any power: power that never stops.
Customers want AI to be fast and always available. Investors want new and better data products. Innovation requires a lot of computing power. Providing what customers and investors want is an existential assignment for any corporation. In technology, the demand and the competition are hyperscale and hyperfast.
There is only one energy source that can meet combined demands of low-carbon generation, 24/7 reliability, massive power density, grid stability and genuine scalability: nuclear energy.
This is why I call it not just a partnership, but a structural alliance: “Atoms for Algorithms.”
A two-way partnership
Artificial intelligence is not only powered by nuclear energy, it’s also improving it.
Let me list 4 areas:
In nuclear power operations, AI supports predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and optimization of thermal performance.
In design, it supports accelerated reactor modelling, fuel-cycle simulation, and materials development.
In safety, AI supports accident simulation, response analysis, and the development of emergency procedures.
And in safeguards it provides analysis of hours of surveillance footage, satellite imagery, and offers important pattern recognition tools.
This is happening right now in IAEA laboratories and across our work with Member States on all continents.
Reassuringly, despite its brilliance, AI still needs a human to make sure it is right and impartial, and to understand the politics behind a safeguards footnote.
And it requires humans to make sure it has the energy it needs, wherever in the world it operates.
Data centres and their energy needs
AI may live in the cloud, but it runs on electricity.
Across the world, data centres consume more than 400 TWh of electricity each year. As their number grows at unprecedented rates of 20 to 30%, their total energy consumption is expected to more than double to nearly 1000 TWh per year. That’s as much electricity as is needed to power a G7 country.
We have a huge opportunity to make sure our digital future runs on clean energy. This is where Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) become especially relevant. They work particularly well for data centres because they are designed to be built in segmental units, making phased deployment possible. As an AI cluster expands, so can its nuclear power source.
The smaller footprint of SMRs and their enhanced safety systems mean they can operate close to industrial zones, including data-centre campuses. With SMRs, tech companies can avoid dependence on constrained regional electricity grids and reduce transmission losses. This becomes decisive in places where grid upgrades are slow, and interconnection queues already stretch far into the future.
SMRs need to get from the development stage to the international market fast and safely. The IAEA’s Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative has been working with regulators and industry to get it done.
Around the world, more than 30 newcomer countries are looking to introduce nuclear energy, including SMRs. The IAEA works with them. Many of these same countries are also exploring how AI can support their development and economic modernization. The two go hand in hand.
The IAEA helps countries map out their energy future, using proven planning tools and decades of experience. In my travels, leaders everywhere talk about their long-term strategies for energy and economic growth; again and again, nuclear energy and AI are raised in the same sentence.
Today, AI-driven data centres are concentrated in a limited number of hubs. But that map is changing. A rapid global response to the surge in AI and cloud computing could see as much as 7 trillion dollars spent on data centres around the world by 2030. New digital corridors will emerge, including in Asia, Latin America and Africa. All of them will require reliable energy sources. And all of them will require local knowledge, trusted partners, and long-term cooperation focused on technology and economic growth.
AI in industrialised economies
The United States has more nuclear power plants than any other country and is working actively to triple capacity. It holds a leadership position in the development of artificial intelligence, hosting nearly 45% of the world’s data centres and more than half of all hyperscale facilities.
In Canada, rising investment in data centres is happening alongside the major refurbishment of existing nuclear power plants.
Europe has some of the world’s densest digital corridors, with hubs in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London. In Germany, Frankfurt hosts one of the largest internet exchange points by peak traffic. Italy’s hubs of Milan and Turin are poised to grow.
Nuclear energy still provides about half the EU’s low-carbon power. Existing leaders like France and the UK are doubling down on nuclear, and newcomers like Poland are making fast progress in joining the club.
Russia has a skilled research base in mathematics and computer science working on AI, and in nuclear energy it remains the world’s largest exporter, as well as a leading operator and developer of advanced reactor technologies.
China has bet on AI and on nuclear energy, with remarkable success. Its rapid advances in AI development and the construction of AI-focused data centres are happening as more nuclear-reactors are being built in China than anywhere else.
As Japan turns once-again to nuclear energy, it is investing heavily also in building and upgrading data centres to meet rising demand.
In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is one of the most recent countries to build a successful nuclear energy programme and is a leading regional AI hub. Saudi Arabia is considering introducing nuclear energy and is also investing heavily in AI.
Israel is among technology leaders, with strong entrepreneurial community.
AI’s potential in Asia
Singapore is hub of connectivity, while South Korea is advanced in AI and nuclear energy.
Elsewhere in Asia there is enormous potential: countries including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the Philippines represent some of the fastest-growing markets for data-centre investment. Booming internet adoption and rapid digitalization are pushing infrastructure to keep pace.
If these countries align digital growth with firm, clean power, including SMRs, they will build some of the world’s most sustainable AI corridors.
AI in Latin America
In Latin America, countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Colombia are emerging as important markets for AI and cloud services. This is driven by expanding digital economies and rising demand for data-centre infrastructure.
Argentina has the opportunity to scale digital capabilities alongside its established nuclear-energy programme and its development of small modular reactors.
As a whole, the region provides the chance to build a sustainable and resilient digital ecosystem with clean, reliable power as a stabilizing foundation.
Africa’s digital leap
Africa stands poised for a digital leap. Its internet adoption is growing several times faster than the global average, but the continent still hosts less than one percent of global data-centre capacity.
Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa are emerging as digital hubs. South Africa alone provides more than half of Africa’s data-centre capacity.
Governments across the continent are determined to expand reliable electricity to more than 600 million people without access.
A growing number of countries, including Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Zambia, are exploring both conventional and modular nuclear power.
By harnessing clean, dependable energy, Africa has the opportunity to build a resilient, scalable digital presence that can support its rapidly expanding economies and populations.
Across these regions, the IAEA steadfastly supports the growth of economies. We help countries examine their readiness to introduce or expand nuclear power programmes. Our review missions cover everything from legal and regulatory requirements to the state of the power grid and human resources.
The Role of the IAEA
As nuclear energy and AI converge, we are facilitating the safe integration of AI into nuclear operations. Digital resilience, regulatory capacity and a common scientific base are key.
Equally, we are accelerating nuclear energy deployment. The IAEA has deep experience across the full spectrum of technologies, from large reactors and SMRs, to AI applications.
The IAEA is the bridge to helping AI grow with the safe companion of nuclear energy. We are at the centre of the global nuclear safety standards system and support countries in building nuclear energy programmes through our Milestones Approach.
We help nations benefit from nuclear energy for electricity, for desalination, for medical research, and for radiotherapy care, to name but a few examples. This requires close collaboration with governments, regulators, academia, industry and local communities. More and more, we are poised to help nations benefit from nuclear energy for AI.
We have created pioneering partnerships with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and are in the process of doing the same with other regional development banks. Together we help countries meet their economic ambitions.
Ensuring success requires not only financing, but also the policies, expertise and safeguards that make investment sound, sustainable and trustworthy.
As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado said: “We make the path by walking.”
The Agency walks with every nation.
Atoms for Algorithms
Over the coming two days, you will have the chance to walk together and to discuss how to make this alliance – Atoms for Algorithms – happen. It is why we have assembled this outstanding group of representatives from every corner of the fields of AI, nuclear energy and beyond.
The interest in being part of this Symposium, here in person and online, is immense – representatives of 252 different organizations are registered: 23 nuclear operators; 13 State corporations; 13 AI and technology companies; 25 nuclear suppliers; 11 SMR and advanced reactor developers; 8 national laboratories; 19 research institutions; 28 universities; 29 regulatory bodies; 15 government agencies and ministries; 5 intergovernmental organizations; 10 industry associations, 8 NGOs; 21 consulting and engineering firms; 7 waste management and decommissioning companies; 7 financial and legal firms; and that still leaves 10 in other categories.
I encourage you to talk to each other openly, continue the dialogue when you return home, collaborate across borders and disciplines, and come back to report on how you have transformed ideas into real progress.
Through the ideas and expertise you share this week, the IAEA will develop a framework and concrete action plans together with experts from both the AI and nuclear fields.
Our goal is to deliver tangible and coordinated outcomes that do two things: 1. advance clean energy solutions for AI and data centres; and 2. improve performance and accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy technologies.
We will make it happen by using the many avenues we’ve already built delivering the IAEA’s “Atoms for Peace and Development” mission, and by establishing partnerships with you, with our Member States, and with other key stakeholders.
I would like to thank the US, Japan and the other contributors who have supported this Symposium.
In closing, I promise you: the IAEA will stay ahead of the curve. We will support you, create opportunities, and remain an impartial, technical, ever-innovating global asset that serves the international community and you.
Let’s work for a future where AI expands human creativity, data centres run on clean, reliable power, nuclear anchors a sustainable digital age, and every region benefits.
If we get this right, we will shape a century worthy of our highest aspirations.
As Niels Bohr is said to have quipped: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Then, let’s not predict the future, let’s build it.
If we succeed, one day, in whatever language AI invents, it will say this: “They understood the challenge and they did what was needed.”
Thank you.