AI uses a lot of power. Some of the next generation data centers may use as much power as one million U.S. households. Technology companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta hope nuclear power will offer a climate solution for this energy use. Nuclear power plants can deliver hundreds of megawatts of power without producing greenhouse gas emissions. But some long-time watchers of the nuclear industry are skeptical that it's the right investment for big tech companies to make.

Read more of science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel's reporting here.

Interested in more stories about the future of energy? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!

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It's the most wonderful time of year, er, week, because it's that time when we look at the most fascinating economic numbers from the news.

On today's Indicators of the Week: A messy grocery store breakup, a quantum leap in subatomic computing and an unexpected change to the Christmas tree market.

Happy holidays!

Related Episodes:
The Efficient Christmas: Why Economists Hate Gifts
We buy a lot of Christmas trees
Can an old law bring down grocery prices?

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Nuclear energy hasn't been a growing industry in decades. But now, it seems to be making a comeback. This week, the Biden administration announced a goal to triple nuclear energy capacity in the US by 2050. And over the past few months, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all made deals to use nuclear energy to power their artificial intelligence appetites. Today on the show, could nuclear energy work differently this time?

Related episodes:
The debate at the heart of new electricity transmission (Apple / Spotify)
Wind boom, wind bust (Two windicators) (Apple / Spotify)
How China became solar royalty (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Over the past three decades, Susan Wojcicki had a knack for seeing a startup's potential. Her intuition helped shape the growth of YouTube and Google.

(Image credit: Fabrice Coffrini)

The highly anticipated decision comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country's biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century.

(Image credit: Richard Drew)

As artificial intelligence seeps into some realms of society, it rushes into others. One area it's making a big difference is protein science — as in the "building blocks of life," proteins! Producer Berly McCoy talks to host Emily Kwong about the newest advance in protein science: AlphaFold3, an AI program from Google DeepMind. Plus, they talk about the wider field of AI protein science and why researchers hope it will solve a range of problems, from disease to the climate.

Have other aspects of AI you want us to cover? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Is Google an illegal monopoly that's thwarted rivals to remain on top or is it simply a beloved search engine? Now it's up to the judge to decide.

(Image credit: Spencer Platt)

The tech giant fired 28 employees who took part in a protest over the company's Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government. One fired worker tells her story.

(Image credit: Alexander Koerner)