LYNCHBURG, Va. - The sci-fi-worthy machine soaring 120 feet tall in the hills outside Lynchburg had been all but left for dead - a $400 million experiment that collapsed as the energy economy shifted and the financial prospects for next-generation nuclear technology soured.
The faux eight-story reactor in Lynchburg, built to mimic a nuclear plant but run on electricity so engineers can safely monitor and tinker with it, languished a decade unused on a Liberty University engineering campus.
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Now, with the AI build out exploding across the country, a pair of engineering wizards with a nuclear start-up and ******* eX pedigree see in it a lucrative solution to one of the country's most vexing challenges: powering the proliferation of data centers.
They are betting that they can leverage a forgotten test facility started in 2009 as a launchpad to build the small, more nimble nuclear reactors that the industry has been promising for decades could create cheap, reliable energy.
#post #engineering #washington
The faux eight-story reactor in Lynchburg, built to mimic a nuclear plant but run on electricity so engineers can safely monitor and tinker with it, languished a decade unused on a Liberty University engineering campus.
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.
Now, with the AI build out exploding across the country, a pair of engineering wizards with a nuclear start-up and ******* eX pedigree see in it a lucrative solution to one of the country's most vexing challenges: powering the proliferation of data centers.
They are betting that they can leverage a forgotten test facility started in 2009 as a launchpad to build the small, more nimble nuclear reactors that the industry has been promising for decades could create cheap, reliable energy.
#post #engineering #washington
4 days ago
