When AI Needs Nuclear to Survive
Nuclear power fuels AI's explosive growth in Vancouver. As reactors rise to power our tech-dependent world, one woman questions the cost of progress.
Nuclear Power
By Elke Porter | WBN News Vancouver | January 5, 2026
Subscription to WBN and being a Writer is FREE!
Karen remembered her grandmother's stories about hiding under school desks during Cold War drills, the mushroom cloud a symbol of existential dread. Now, as she drove past the new reactor complex outside Vancouver, its cooling towers rising like monuments to a different future, she felt the weight of irony settle in her chest. At least they'd painted them a tasteful grey-green to blend with the coastal rainforest. Very BC.
The reactor would power three massive data centres, each one training AI models that promised to revolutionize everything from medicine to agriculture. Her own job as a radiologist was already half-automated, the AI catching tumours she might have missed. She should have been grateful. Instead, she felt displaced, a ghost haunting her own profession.
"Nuclear is clean," the billboards proclaimed in English, French, and Mandarin. "Nuclear is safe." And technically, they were right. Modern reactors bore little resemblance to Chernobyl's flawed design or Fukushima's tsunami-battered hull. Small modular reactors, advanced safety systems, accident-tolerant fuels—the technology had evolved. The reactor even had a craft brewery planned for the visitor centre, because of course it did. What hadn't evolved was the conversation about why this was all happening so fast.
And Vancouver, a city once at the forefront of the anti-nuclear movement in the 1980s, fuelled by fears of nuclear war, now hosted protest rallies of a different kind—mostly concerned about whether the reactor's construction would disrupt the local orca migration patterns. The irony wasn't lost on Karen: the existential dread had been replaced by environmental impact assessments and community consultation meetings where people debated the font size on informational brochures while sipping fair-trade coffee.
Karen's son, Daniel, lived in a world where self-driving cars navigated streets with inhuman precision and chatbots wrote his essays before he could finish thinking them through. He'd never known a time before constant connectivity, before algorithms knew him better than he knew himself. When she asked him about the new reactor, he shrugged while his phone ordered him bubble tea via an app he hadn't even opened. "We need the power, Mom. AI isn't going to run on hydroelectric and good intentions."
But at what cost? Karen thought of the studies emerging about screen addiction, about young people reporting record levels of anxiety and disconnection despite living in one of the world's most beautiful cities. The machines were meant to serve humanity, yet increasingly humanity seemed to serve the machines, feeding them data, electricity, attention. The reactors sprouted like mushrooms after rain—ironic, given their ancestors—each one justified by necessity. AI demanded power. The Internet demanded power. The autonomous vehicles and smart cities and infinite cloud storage all demanded power. Even the yoga studios had smart mirrors now.
And so nuclear grew, not because people had overcome their fears but because those fears had been quietly overruled by appetite. The appetite for convenience, for speed, for technologies that promised to think for us so we wouldn't have to.
Karen pulled into her driveway, where a delivery robot waited with her groceries, somehow managing to look apologetic about blocking the sidewalk. As she carried the bags inside, she wondered: How do humans stay well in this mix? Perhaps the answer wasn't in the reactors or the AI, but in remembering to ask the question. In choosing, deliberately, what to automate and what to preserve. In insisting that technology serve human flourishing, not just human productivity.
The reactor's lights glowed on the horizon. The future was here, humming with megawatts and processing power. Whether it would illuminate or consume them remained to be seen.
Elke Porter at:
Westcoast German Media
LinkedIn: Elke Porter or
WhatsApp: +1 604 828 8788.
Public Relations. Communications. Education
Let’s bring your story to life — contact me for books, articles, blogs, and bold public relations ideas that make an impact.
TAGS: #Nuclear Power #AI Revolution #Tech Ethics #Future Of Energy #Digital Age #Human vs Technology #WBN News Ai #WBN News Vancouver #Elke Porter
Members Discussion