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Paper short abstract

From the power required to train and use models to the energy needs of entire data centres, AI’s technological assemblages consume electricity on an elusive scale. This paper unpacks how AI’s costs are narratively reconciled by presenting nuclear power as a ‘green techno-fix’.

Paper long abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) entails vast energy demands and creates significant carbon costs. From the power required to train and use models to the energy needs of data centres, AI’s technological assemblages consume electricity on an elusive scale. This paper unpacks how tech corporations narratively reconcile AI’s costs, by presenting nuclear power as a ‘green techno-fix’. While the classification of nuclear energy as ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ remains contested, the coupling of AI and nuclear imaginaries reveals a mutual legitimation, pitching technological solutionism against the environmental crisis. In analysing corporate communication and nuclear energy investments (by Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft; from September 2024 onwards), the paper shows how large technology corporations sustain visions of AI progress and promises amid ecological contradictions. It examines how technology corporations narratively intertwine imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) with those of nuclear energy. It investigates the discursive construction and legitimation of AI, focusing on its entanglement with the political economy of energy infrastructures. The analysis identifies a circular narrative structure through which AI and nuclear energy are co-positioned. First, corporations deploy expansive imaginaries of AI (ranging from breakthroughs in medicine and climate modelling to economic revitalisation) to morally sanction AI’s escalating energy consumption. Second, nuclear energy is rebranded as 'carbon-free solution', with its legitimacy enhanced through association with AI innovation and societal progress. Such narratives sidestep persistent societal, environmental, and political contestations surrounding nuclear energy. They moreover sideline the question whether AI can fulfil the societal promises invoked.