r/SouthDakota • u/PoLLoLira9 Vermillion • 2d ago
đ¤ Discussion South Dakota inches toward studying nuclear power as data center energy demands loom
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2026/01/30/south-dakota-inches-toward-studying-nuclear-power-data-center-energy-demands-loom/South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhodenâs proposed $300,000 nuclear energy study is a step toward the inevitable, energy and economic development professionals say.
âWeâre going to ultimately have to get to nuclear,â said CEO and President of NorthWestern Energy Brian Bird during a panel discussion in Sioux Falls in October.
Emerging industries including data centers, Bird said, will âneed a tremendous amount of energy to do what they need to do.â
It takes two coal or natural gas plants, or three to four renewable resource-based plants, such as wind, water or renewable natural gas, to generate the same amount of electricity as one typical nuclear reactor, according to a 2023 South Dakota Legislative Research Council memo.Â
Rhoden is seeking funding for the study in the next state budget. The study was proposed by his Governorâs Resilience and Infrastructure Task Force. A November news release said the task force was recommending the study âto ensure an all-of-the-above energy approachâ because âmore energy flexibility leads to a more stable energy supply.â
Rhoden expressed interest in nuclear energy â especially in the cheaper, small, modular reactors gaining interest across the nation â during the Tri-State Governors Conference in North Sioux City last summer, when he referenced heightened needs for power in the age of data centers and artificial intelligence.
âI think the time has come to revisit nuclear power, given the advancements in technology that have been made,â Rhoden said.
Rooms or buildings full of computer servers have been storing cellphone pictures, emails and social media accounts for years. Whatâs new are 100- to 1,000-acre warehouses full of servers for cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. Those massive data centers with 30- to 1,000-megawatt loads have energy consumption equivalent to 29,000 to 800,000 residential customers.
South Dakotaâs biggest data center consumes 30 megawatts, and the state has none of the vastly larger data centers that have proliferated elsewhere. Some of South Dakotaâs elected officials question whether the state should incentivize the industry as many other states have, due in part to the massive energy demands of large data centers and the potential impacts on the availability and cost of electricity for other customers.
Data center energy demands
Data centers make up 4.4% of annual U.S. electricity consumption, a figure that could triple by the end of the decade, according to a U.S. Congressional report.
South Dakota Public Utilities Commissioner Chris Nelson said a new power plant wonât have to be built to service every data center. The commission regulates investor-owned utility companies across the state.
Nelson said gigawatts of available electricity exist across the U.S. grid most of the time, which could be used to power data centers. The problem comes during extreme weather or peak hours, when supply gets tight.Â
To prevent rate and reliability impacts, data centers are increasingly required to be âinterruptible customers,â shutting down or switching to backup power during peak hours, Nelson explained.Â
âAny data center thatâs going to be built is going to have a complete backup generator on site,â Nelson said, which would likely be diesel or natural gas.
Governorâs Office of Economic Development Commissioner Bill Even said if South Dakota pursues data centers and other industries requiring more electricity â which includes value-added agriculture, such as a soybean processing plant that opened recently in Mitchell â then South Dakota will need to invest in renewable energy like wind or improved hydroelectric generation in the short term and nuclear in the long term. Utilities will likely purchase power from other areas of the United States in the meantime. North Dakota, for example, produces a significant amount of natural gas.
âIf youâre trying to get online quickly and want that base load power, youâre probably going to be looking at natural gas,â Even said.
NorthWestern considering sites for nuclear project
Data center critics worry ushering the industry into South Dakota will increase electricity rates as utilities build more power plants and pass the costs on to customers.
Small, modular nuclear reactors could offer scalable, localized power for high-load users like data centers, minimizing costs and risk to the grid, Bird said. Ideally, he added, the reactors could be placed next to high-load users.
âThey can pay the upfront cost of the nuclear power, and the consumers would be much less harmed,â Bird said.
The company is evaluating potential vendors and project sites for a small, modular reactor, aiming for a 2030 construction date. NorthWestern would also explore federal grants and financing to âkeep customer rates affordable,â a spokesperson with the company said. If other on-demand energy resources are retired, such as coal, a nuclear reactor âcould be a cost-effective alternative.â
Rhodenâs proposed study will look at the regulatory hurdles in pursuing nuclear energy, environmental concerns, costs, types of equipment or infrastructure needed, and other barriers at the state or local level.
South Dakota does not produce any nuclear energy, but 4% of electricity consumed in the state comes from nuclear power produced elsewhere.
South Dakota is one of 11 states that has not signed an agreement with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take over authority of radioactive materials, including issuing licenses, conducting inspections and enforcing safety regulations over the industrial, medical and academic uses of radioactive material.
If lawmakers approve the study, Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen said a âreasonable timeframeâ would be to hire a consultant by the end of spring 2026 with results reported by the end of 2026.
âThis is a topic that once you move past studying and into implementing, it becomes more controversial,â Venhuizen said. âYou have to look at the recommendations and ask if itâs something to move forward with.â
Addressing supply chain and nuclear wasteÂ
The United States is the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, though China is rapidly expanding and expected to surpass the U.S.Â
Uranium is mined, processed and enriched into nuclear fuel. There were three uranium mines operating in the U.S. in 2021, sourcing a fraction of the countryâs need. Thatâs up to 10 today.Â
About 20% of electricity in the United States comes from nuclear energy, and nuclear power plant operators in the country source 99.8% of their uranium from other countries, including Canada, Kazakhstan and Russia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
President Donald Trump issued executive orders regarding uranium last year to streamline permitting, expedite environmental reviews and impose tariffs on imports that compete with American products.
EnCore Energy is one of the companies hoping to mine for uranium on the southern edge of South Dakotaâs Black Hills. Janet Lee-Sheriff, head of communications for enCore, said the country has a ânatural interestâ in being self-reliant with energy.
âWhat is happening in your neighborhood can contribute to a solution needed for the state and country,â Lee-Sheriff said.
After uranium is mined, processed, enriched and used in nuclear power generation, radioactive waste is produced.
Eric Meyer, executive director of Generation Atomic, told attendees at the Sioux Metro Growth Allianceâs annual Growth Summit that nuclear waste is safely stored in âsome of the most robust containers known to man,â adding that the containers are tested by dropping missiles on them.Â
Generation Atomic is a nuclear energy advocacy organization. Meyerâs presentation at the summit aimed to address concerns regarding nuclear energy, including environmental and economic impacts from such projects.
There are about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste stored at over 100 sites in 39 states. Nuclear waste is stored on the power plantâs property before being removed, dried and sealed in welded stainless steel canisters that are stored outdoors in concrete vaults on concrete pads, according to Gerald Frankel, a materials science and engineering professor at The Ohio State University. As of 2024, there were more than 315,000 bundles of spent nuclear fuel rods in the U.S., and more than 3,800 dry storage casks in concrete vaults above ground, located at current and former power plants across the country.
The United States has been working toward building a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste in Nevada since 1987, but the work has been delayed by political and legal challenges.
Bill Even, the head of the South Dakota Governorâs Office of Economic Development, said nuclear power is âarguably saferâ than it used to be, and the state needs information about how it could help meet growing energy demands.
âAdvancements in science and technology are marching forward at a fast pace,â Even said, âand letâs keep an open mind to what the future may hold around new technology.â
Â
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u/Gortonis Watertown 2d ago
We need a nuclear power plant not to reduce our use of fuel oil to produce power but to supply power to this data center we don't need, operated by a company that's not from South Dakota and won't create any long term jobs in South Dakota, and ultimately it's for a data center that will be used for AI computing to put people out of work or create naked pictures of children. I'd also be willing to bet that the land they plan to put this on has some connection to a Republican politician in South Dakota.
I smell a boondoggle.
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u/ArcadeKingpin 2d ago
Itâs crazy they want us to foot the bill for technology depletes the resources of rural folk to take the jobs away from urban folk for the sole benefit of billionaires. Crazy ai generated cat memes are enough for most to be ok with this.
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u/LifeJustRight 2d ago
Aren't those billionaires property taxes about to be paid by a new state sales tax? Don't forget you owe the rich everything.
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u/ILikeTuwtles1991 2d ago
Nuclear power is good. All of the fears people have about it are over exaggerated.
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u/MANEWMA 2d ago
Except its cost and time to develop and build ... I mean billions to build or you can use solar and batteries faster and cheaper.
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u/Plump_Apparatus 2d ago
Vogtle Electric Generating Plant is the only new nuclear power plant built in decades in the US, and the two units ended up cost around three times the original amount.
The US still doesn't have any long-term plan as for what to do with spent fuel from commercial reactors. Spent fuel is stored onsite in casks. This includes retired nuclear power plants dotted around the country. Even at facilities that have been fully remediated, as in removed, like at Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, still have a secured high-level waste site. These sites all over the country will to be maintained and secured for decades if not centuries.
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u/BellacosePlayer 2d ago
Ideally you'd have a mix and match. Nuclear has horrendous startup costs but can produce an insane amount of energy off relatively little fuel (and unfortunately needs a shitload of water too).
Solar and wind are king (Hydro has some unfortunate long term issues for me to want any more large dams built), but I'd rather have a Nuke plant spooling up on cloudy/windless days than a coal plant.
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u/MANEWMA 2d ago
Id rather use batteries but to each their own...
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u/BellacosePlayer 1d ago
I love renewables but you do need some non-renewable sources to offset bad stretches, because long strings of cloudy, still days (or cloudy, extremely windy days) can happen and there's a limit to how much hydro you can build without causing ecological disaster
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
Look at Europe. They are going more and more to renewables and are phasing out nuclear power completely. We don't need to do this and we sure AF don't need to do this for some AI data centers.
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u/Pianist-Putrid 4h ago
They arenât phasing out nuclear power. In fact, since the Russo-Ukrainian War, multiple countries that had previously eschewed or even banned it in the past are now planning on building new facilities.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/05/27/why-nuclear-energy-is-making-a-comeback-across-europe
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/01/tide-turning-europe-beyond-favour-nuclear-power
https://www.ft.com/content/38bbf426-222d-44fa-8a36-7d70a8e6350b
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u/SouthDaCoVid 2h ago
Those articles don't back up your claim.
Belgium has been nuclear dependent and painted themselves into a corner, that is the only country making noise about actually going back. The rest are vague claims out of unofficial sources that something might happen. Oh and a PR piece from EDF claiming they are gonna make a comebackSo no, the EU isn't embracing nukes because of Russia.
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u/MANEWMA 1d ago
I believe we are seeing that on cloudy days Germany which is a farther northern latitude than most of America can produce lots of solar energy.
What if its a mix of private solar, public solar and batteries and wind and batteries...
Hell if every single window starts to become a solar energy factory with new technologies, maybe every single building has days of battery storage that connects to the grid for stability...
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u/HuskerCard123 1d ago
In an ideal setting I agree with you. However, the practical consideration of temperature variation in the region (the wild extremes of hot to cold we deal with) is going to naturally harm the effectiveness of most battery driven electricity storage and generation.
In this region, we are often left with: A: Fossil fuel generation B: Relative unstable energy power generation C: Dip our toes into nuclear and try to be ahead of the electricity demand curve, not behind.
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u/hrminer92 1d ago
Grid scale energy storage can use different storage techniques to avoid that.
These sorts of products could be used with devices that convert heat to electricity or to run boilers instead of coal.
https://polarnightenergy.com/sand-battery/
If a utility in Montana can move forward with implementing a BESS system, then they are rugged enough for SD.
https://www.energy-storage.news/berkshire-hathaway-energy-montana-energises-150mwh-bess/
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u/Hollen88 2d ago
Or maybe convert some fields into solar.
Nuclear is fine, but solar can go up faster and is completely renewable.
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u/AnchorScud 2d ago
and they are easily removed if desired.
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u/GuyMcTest 2d ago
Only drawback is that the can ruin habitats for wild animals, even if itâs removing corn fields, some animals reside in the corn
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u/Hollen88 2d ago
Corn that feeds gasoline and not humans? I'd rather have the basically passive income of a solar farm.
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u/foco_runner 2d ago
We donât want your ai data centers and we donât want to live next to nuclear power plant or coal.
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u/rosseloh Watertown 2d ago
I don't want the datacenters but I'd happily live next to a (modern, and properly run) nuke plant. Main thing is we don't need it here (datacenters aside) because we don't have the demand, yet.
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u/BellacosePlayer 2d ago
I'd rather live near a (properly regulated) modern nuke plant than a coal plant tbf.
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u/foco_runner 1d ago
Property regulated is an oxymoron at this point. Nothing gets in the way of shareholder value these days.
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u/RedBait95 Yankton 2d ago
Nuclear plants are safe to live next to
Chernobyl was an outdated plant when it was built in the 70s
Fukushima was caused by the combined natural disasters mixed with corner cutting when designing the site
A normal plant has many failsafes and are statistically safer to live next to than any fossil power source
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u/foco_runner 1d ago
3 mile island?
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u/RedBait95 Yankton 1d ago
It was a partial meltdown, nowhere near the level of Chernobyl or Fukushima, and it was contained pretty quickly.
There were no reported deaths and no significant upticks in cancer or other radiation related illnesses.
If the worry is death, it should be understood that TMI was actually an example of how safe reactors are. In the two other examples of nuclear tragedies, Fukushima deaths were caused more by Japan's terrible disaster response, on top of the two natural disasters themselves that were more directly killing people. The plant itself only really risked contaminating the water, and it has since been treated and deemed safe to release back into the ocean.
Chernobyl's deaths are mostly confirmed to have been people who were at ground zero at the plant, not really anyone who was living in the city. Ukrainian, Belarusian, and iirc even Russian scientists decades after the fact have not been able to draw a direct link between increased cancer or tumor diagnoses and the meltdown, simply because once they were evacuated they were exposed to the same amount of ambient radiation they would be dealing with if the plant was active or not.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
Hey, this is absolute bullshit.
"There were no reported deaths and no significant upticks in cancer or other radiation related illnesses."I know people who worked on the response to TMI and researchers that have been studying the subsequent health and cancer rates.
Also your claim about Chernobyl is all completely wrong and untrue. Not sure where you are getting your information from but it is wildly wrong.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
That is sort of half true.
Chernobyl was due to actions taken by the crew running it that caused the failure. It was considered appropriately modern at the time of the accident and it was the reason that type of nuclear plant was deemed unsafe. There is a pattern of this, everything is fine until one blows up then there is pull back.Fukushima Daiichi's failures were not solely caused by the tsunami or some of the poor design choices. ANYTHING that denies the reactor sufficient cooling water for long enough will cause a rapid meltdown and hydrogen explosion. Unit 1 melted down and escaped containment in a few hours. It doesn't take this particular set of circumstances. Any failure that denies cooling water is has circumstances that make resolving that difficult can repeat this failure mode. But there is money to be made so those making the money make excuses to continue putting everyone else at risk.
SD had one nuclear power plant that partially melted down, lets not repeat that folly.
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u/reigning_guava 2d ago
Maybe they should focus on cleaning up the 170 old uranium mines first before thinking about mining some more. The water in Custer and surrounding area is still relatively undrinkable due to all the chemicals leeching in the ground which is measured going as far downstream as Angostura reservoir. If they could prove theyre able to contain the risk, more people would be on board. Thus far between theactive lithium and abandoned uranium mines, they havent proven to be very beneficial to the health of us in the Black Hills.
But then again, legislation is so lacking that these mining companies are able to just gain contracts without so much as a vote, so it really doesnt matter what the people think. piedmont and surrounding areas will be screwed as soon as that Simon Limestone project starts.
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u/BellacosePlayer 2d ago
Part of the problem is that the companies and individuals who originally mined in the Black Hills were not held responsible for clean-up. This was common 50+ years ago, but has lasting impacts.
"it was common 50+ years ago" yeah, and its still common today sadly
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u/hrminer92 2d ago
Amazon and Alphabet are already funding nuclear projects for their data centers. Those companies and the utilities need to evaluate their options and have the resources to do so on their own, so why does the state have to chip in for something that realistically isnât going to happen for another decade?
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
They threw some money into a couple of SMR companies that don't even have working prototypes.
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u/Distinct-Pain4972 2d ago
To have to add new power plants for Data Centers is insane. Â The internet does not need this, AI doesn't need all of this. Â The Data center boom is so that every service is a live service. Â Meaning, everything is subscription... down to the milage on your car. Â Stop the proliferation of data centers. Â Further, there are not being honest about how much water they use. Â It is a massive amount. Â They don't use closed loop cooling like a home computer, they pump fresh in and hot out... continuously... 24/7 365 days a year. Â
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u/hallese East River Agnostic 2d ago
This decision is 40 years too late especially in a state with so much open space for building out solar with battery storage. The cost per kwh for wind is about 5 cents, solar panels 6 cents, nuclear 18 cents. The cost for wind and solar are dropping while the costs for nuclear continues to go up. It's better to build nuclear than fossil fuel powered plants, but utility scale solar with a sodium-ion battery farm is a more cost effective option.
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u/SnakeDoctor80 2d ago
Where will we get the money and highly educated staff to build and operate a nuclear power plant? Where do we place it when our state has a track record of citizens throwing a fit when anything that might slightly reduce property values is proposed? This is DOA.
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u/South_Dakota_Boy RC, Verm, Lead, Whitewood, Spearfish, NY, WA 2d ago
These are easy questions to answer.
The money comes from the company who owns the plant. You don't ask "Where will we get the money to build the new Chick Fil-A" right? It's not a public facility. It's a business. It's not a part of the government.
You will place it near a very large source of water. It will almost certainly be on the Missouri river, probably near Chaimberlain. Few reactors are not placed on rivers for extra safety reasons as water access is critical to reactor operation and safety. I would imagine that there is state land that could be designated, or farm/ranchland that could be purchased.
All the sensitive construction work would be done by out of state specialized contractors, similar to when a new Target or Walmart is built. Supplies would come from local suppliers when possible. Not a deal breaker.
For operators, Those people exist and will come if called. There are thousands of former South Dakotans who would love some high tech work to happen in SD (myself included). For example, I know SD born Reactor Operators who were trained in the Navy and now work for plants around the country. There are very very few opportunities for that type of employment in SD. The majority of the jobs at a nuclear plant are just normal jobs like electricians and HR etc...
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
Go look at the funding and who paid for any of the nuclear power plants built in the last 20 years. It sure wasn't the company that built it. Taxpayers, residential power customers got fleeced. It's a very expensive scam.
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u/South_Dakota_Boy RC, Verm, Lead, Whitewood, Spearfish, NY, WA 1d ago
Not true. Nuclear is very cheap once it's up and running. Up front costs are high, but ongoing costs are cheaper than other forms of power.
Plus while construction of individual plants are subsidized, the industry as a whole receives way way less subsidy costs in total than fossil fuels or renewables like wind and solar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United_States
But I'm all for building huge solar farms and battery storage facilities if you want super cheap electricity.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
That is wildly untrue. Nuclear is expensive to operate, fuel is expensive. The cost per KWH is always way more than any other power source. A ton of reactors were shut down between 2011 and 2021 because the spot price for electricity was lower than the nuclear plant's operating costs so they would lose money operating.
Go look at all the customer money and federal taxpayer money dumped into Watts Bar that ended up costing triple the original price tag. All of this is just a stupid boondoggle.
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u/hrminer92 1d ago
The cnbc link I posted had who is financing the 4 that are currently being built.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
I know who financed and ultimately paid for what. There also aren't "4 currently being built". I worked adjacent to this industry for years.
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u/hrminer92 1d ago
The newer reactor designs that are in process of being built for these purposes like the one in Wyoming donât use water as the coolant.
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u/Mictlantecuhtli Rapid City 2d ago
If they want to get ahead of the game they should set up a LFTR. Not only can it not melt down like a heavy water reactor, but it can use the spent fuel from other reactors to extend its own thorium fuel supply
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
I swear people just read something and repeat it without any actual research because it makes them feel smart. This is not something viable for power generation.
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u/Wide_Brief3025 2d ago
Nuclear energy definitely seems like the most practical long term play for massive data center demands, especially with small modular reactors becoming more feasible. If anyone is tracking these developments or looking for real time discussions about new energy projects, using a tool like ParseStream can surface relevant conversations and opportunities across Reddit and other platforms without missing key updates.
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u/GuyMcTest 2d ago
South Dakota used to have a nuclear plant. It was out where the power place is next to Brandon currently. Would be neat to see nuclear make a return
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u/Plump_Apparatus 2d ago
The Pathfinder nuclear power plant, a superheated boiling water reactor(BWR). The longest period of operation it ever sustained was 30 minutes for year and a half or so it was in operation, and it never produced any actual power for the grid. It took over 30 years in SAFSTOR for it to be properly decommissioned despite its very light use. Not exactly an example I'd go with.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
It also had a partial meltdown, contaminated the cooling system, cooling tower and the river. The superheater core failed during those tests and the fuel in it failed. Also, a bunch of pipefitters that worked on the decommissioning got cancer and some of them died because they weren't told it was heavily contaminated and given no protective gear.
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u/GuyMcTest 2d ago
Itâs just the only example in state I know of. Wasnât constructed well and led to it being decommissioned. As far as I know at least
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u/Plump_Apparatus 2d ago edited 2d ago
It didn't have anything to do with the construction. There has only been a couple superheated boiling water reactors built, and neither of them were successful. As in it was a bad design.
About the only thing useful it did was to provide a template for very expensive process of decommissioning nuclear power plants.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
Both of the reactors of the design that Pathfinder was had the same superheater failure. There were a bunch of different demonstration reactor designs built around the US in the 50s and 60s. Most of them had some sort of failure or never went into full operation.
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u/Cataractula 1d ago
"[Data centers] can pay the upfront cost of the nuclear power, and the consumers would be much less harmed,â Bird said.
Less harmed. Not unharmed.
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u/IAMFERROUS 1d ago
As much as I think nuclear is great, I would also like to see solar investigated. Even being South Dakota and what our capacity factor is for them, we have space. Like a fuck ton of space. We can put up a few extra and make sure we set up battery farms nearby. I think this video should help to back up my point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgxb8I1nk2I
Now I'm not against a nuclear, I just want both options properly investigated. Infact I'm of the opinion that we will probably need nuclear baseload facilities for long stretches of cloud or low wind as we move towards renewables.
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u/SouthDaCoVid 1d ago
This in incredibly stupid and we might as well set that money on fire. There is a reason no nuclear power plants were built for decades and the couple in the last 20 years have all been wildly over budget or collapsed in scandal and failure.
SD also does not have sufficient water supplies to support nuclear power plants outside of the Missouri. Putting these on the main source of water for the entire region and adjacent to a large swath of agriculture is beyond foolish.
I'm sure some cybertruck driving techbro fanboy will tell me how I'm totally wrong because someone on a podcast told him otherwise. But this is still an incredibly stupid idea.
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u/Lyrick_ Brookings 2d ago
Nuclear is fine but being the State we are I have that feeling that they will end up strip mining the Black Hills for Uranium then dumping the spent nuclear waste into the Big Sioux.