NANO Nuclear Energy Inc (NASDAQ:) CEO James Walker warns that electricity demand growth is creating a near-term cost-of-living and reliability crisis as prices rise and grid congestion worsens. Walker told Investing.com that for hyperscale AI infrastructure, power has shifted from being an optimized cost to a fundamental gating factor on whether projects get built at all.

Walker said the bottleneck for AI expansion is no longer technological sophistication but power availability, with campuses requiring hundreds of megawatts and very high uptime. The company is advancing its KRONOS MMR reactor program toward licensing and construction while discussing potential commercial partnerships in the U.S. and globally. Walker emphasized that this is a near-term constraint that will tighten as AI demand compounds.

Microreactors offer a solution by enabling direct partnerships between nuclear providers and private enterprise, allowing data centers and industrial campuses to host on-site reactors for price stability and reliability. Walker said this model shifts power from being something grid-dependent to something planned alongside facility development, potentially accelerating deployment once regulatory and manufacturing hurdles are cleared.