In the mid-1970s, a group of environmental activists created the Clamshell Alliance, a group dedicated to opposing the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. In their 1977 “Declaration of Nuclear Resistance,” they declared an “immediate and permanent halt to the construction and export of nuclear power plants” as they are “wasteful” and an “economic catastrophe.”
Sound familiar?
A new moral panic seems to be sweeping across the American political landscape. In at least 14 states, legislators have introduced bills to freeze the construction of data centers. More than a hundred local communities have enacted their own moratoriums. In March, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, which would halt all new construction exceeding twenty megawatts nationwide until Congress passes comprehensive federal AI legislation — a framework that they and other Democrats have been instrumental in blocking.
FOREIGN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS ARE FUELING THE ANTI-DATA CENTER MOVEMENT
Ocasio-Cortez claims that we need to “stop the expansion of these data centers until we have a framework to adequately address the existential harm AI poses to our society. We must choose humanity over profit.”
The Clamshell Alliance, fortunately, failed in stopping the construction of the Seabrook nuclear plant.
As a result, Seabrook produces power for nearly 8% of New England’s electricity needs. It has allowed Massachusetts to decrease carbon emissions while reducing costs for consumers.
The emotionally driven anti-nuclear power forces lost that battle, but they won the war.
In 1974, American utilities ordered more than 40 nuclear reactors in a single year. By 1978, the last new order had been placed. It would be three decades before another followed. After Three Mile Island in 1979, 67 planned reactors were canceled in under a decade. Of the 253 reactors ordered over the life of the American nuclear program, nearly half were abandoned. The industrial base that had made construction feasible — suppliers, skilled tradespeople, engineering firms — dispersed and disappeared. When the country finally attempted to build again at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, decades later, the project ran years behind schedule and billions over budget. After letting hysteric opposition stop building “temporarily,” America had lost the capacity to build.
The consequences of that lost capacity are still compounding. American nuclear generation has been effectively frozen at about 19% of the electricity mix since the late 1980s. Our nuclear reactors are aging, and the country that once led the world in nuclear technology now struggles to complete a single project on time.
While America’s nuclear capacity stalled, China has been building. It now operates 61 nuclear reactors with 39 more under construction, approving 10 or more new units every year since 2022. While our nuclear capacity has been stalled for decades, China intends to double its generation in the coming years.
This is what it looks like to stop building. The pause isn’t temporary, and the rest of the world won’t wait for America to catch up. We’ve seen what happened with nuclear power, and now the data center panic is heading down the same path. Already, half of the planned U.S. data center builds in 2026 have been delayed or canceled. Formal moratoriums would lock these delays in permanently.
As with nuclear energy, the “existential fear” driving the call for these moratoriums is unfounded.
Consider the Stratos project in Box Elder County, Utah. The site is 40,000 acres of unincorporated ranchland in Hansel Valley, a stretch of country the county describes as difficult to farm and sparsely populated. The developer, working with a firm owned by Kevin O’Leary and Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, plans to generate all power on-site using a natural gas pipeline that already runs through the property. The facility will not connect to the local grid. It will not raise anyone’s electricity bill. The water comes from existing water rights already attached to the land, historically used for agricultural irrigation.
The developers claim, and the state has not disputed, that the facility’s net water draw will actually be lower than the agricultural use it replaces, producing what the governor’s office calls a “net benefit to the Great Salt Lake watershed.” The nearest building would sit about 10 miles from the Great Salt Lake.
Still, more than 3,700 people filed protests with the Utah Division of Water Rights. The constantly concerned Sierra Club called the project “irresponsible and dangerous.” A county commission meeting grew so heated that one commissioner told the crowd to “grow up” before the board finally approved the project. A referendum effort is now underway to reverse the decision.
The furor over the Stratos project has been replicated nationwide. In the small town of Festus, Missouri, several city council members lost their jobs over approving a data center that is slated to create 150 jobs.
What would it mean if these anti-building forces succeed?
DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE: NO NEED TO PANIC OVER DATA CENTER ENERGY USE
Well, let’s think about the top issue for voters: the economy. Stopping the data center buildout will bring the AI boom to a halt and, alongside it, the hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs being created. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the sort of union that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez claim to support, loves data centers. It has noted that their buildout is creating a “new generation of IBEW jobs.”
America has faced this choice before: give in to hysterical panic over building or embrace a prosperous future enabled by new technology. I hope voters and their elected officials, from the county level to the halls of Congress, recognize the stakes and make the right choice.
Alex Pfeiffer is a former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and White House principal deputy communications director.