AI data center push is fueling new nuclear threat

There is a lesson that keeps arriving in new and more violent forms: Energy security is national security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 delivered it to Europe, which woke up to the folly of overdependence on Russian gas. Now, Operation Epic Fury, and the strikes and counter-strikes between the United States, Israel and Iran, is delivering new reminders, with a twist that policymakers have barely begun to reckon with.

Nuclear power plants are becoming targets of war.

This is not a hypothetical. In 2022, Russian forces seized and shelled the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, and on May 3 the facility, which is now held by Russia, reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that its external radiation control laboratory had been targeted by a drone. In April, Israeli and American strikes targeted the area around Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant and President Trump threatened to wipe out “every single Power Plant” in Iran. In return, the Islamic Republic sent strikes near Israel’s Dimona complex. On Monday, the UAE “condemned in the strongest terms” the targeting of its civilian nuclear power plant in Barakah, by drones presumably sent by Iran or one of its proxies. The director-general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, has warned repeatedly about the risk of a radioactive incident at such plants. 

This is how close we are to a moment the world has not seen since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945: a nuclear incident caused by active warfare.

The cruel irony is that this danger is arriving precisely as the world is rushing toward nuclear energy. The logic is sound. Every country watching these conflicts understands that dependence on any single energy supplier is a strategic liability. South Korea is lifting caps on domestic coal production. Greece is pressing for greater development of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean. Most countries are auditing options presented by solar and wind. But across Europe, East Asia and South Asia, the turn is toward nuclear power. Poland, France, Turkey, Egypt, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Malaysia are all building, expanding or seriously considering domestic nuclear programs.

The global artificial intelligence buildout, with its insatiable appetite for reliable baseload electricity to power data centers, is accelerating that interest in nuclear energy further. According to the International Energy Agency, electricity demand from data centers soared by 17% in 2025, and that of AI-focused data centers climbed even faster — well outpacing growth in global electricity demand of 3%. Although AI is becoming more energy efficient, more people are using it every day, and higher demand products like AI agents are on the horizon.

A nuclear renaissance has been underway since Russia’s invasion. What has not kept pace is any serious international framework for protecting plants when wars break out. This is yet one more topic that delegates could consider at the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) review conference, which is currently being held at the United Nations — a moment available every five years to assess how well we are doing globally at nuclear disarmament, minimizing proliferation and advancing safe nuclear power. The reality, of course, is “not so well.” 

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Nuclear energy has always come with proliferation risks, something Iran’s behavior over two decades has illustrated in real time. But proliferation assumes a state or non-state actor trying to acquire weapons covertly. The new risk is different and, in some ways, harder to manage: It assumes that civilian power infrastructure becomes a military asset, a hostage or a weapon simply by existing in a conflict zone. Today’s reactors are built for safety and are extremely resilient, but not necessarily to be hit repeatedly by an adversary’s missiles and drones.  

The world has not resolved this problem. The Geneva Conventions offer limited protection for nuclear facilities, and the IAEA has no meaningful enforcement mechanism when a belligerent nation decides a plant is a legitimate military objective or a useful bargaining chip. Zaporizhzhia first exposed that gap four years ago. Bushehr and Dimona are stressing it further. Draft documents from the NPT Review Conference make clear these growing concerns.

The reasons many countries are pushing toward nuclear power — energy independence, climate goals, AI-driven electricity demand — are real and pressing. It is a clean energy option that provides enormous home-grown energy that is, and will be, needed to power vibrant economies of the future. But the conversation about nuclear power’s future has to expand beyond megawatts and construction timelines to consider new and growing risks. The proliferation of reactors in politically volatile regions creates proliferation of a different kind: a proliferation of radioactive landmines that no army fully controls once a war begins.

Operation Epic Fury will be studied for many lessons. This one, that civilian nuclear infrastructure is now a feature of the modern battlefield, is among the most consequential. The nexus between energy security and national security has become ever more entwined.