Nuclear power plants operating today will shoulder most of the world's low-carbon electricity demand for decades to come, and keeping them running safely requires more than just engineering ambition,it requires industrial polymeric coatings and repair composites that protect critical infrastructure from corrosion and erosion. While tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta announce major nuclear energy investments to power AI data centers, a less glamorous but equally critical challenge is extending the operational life of reactors already in service.

Why Are Existing Nuclear Plants So Critical to Powering AI?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that electricity demand from data centers will more than double, rising from 415 terawatts per hour (TWh) in 2024 to approximately 945 TWh by 2030. This unprecedented surge is driven almost entirely by artificial intelligence adoption. While renewable energy sources like wind and solar continue to expand, they cannot reliably provide the 24/7 baseload power that energy-intensive AI infrastructure requires. Nuclear power currently generates about 9 percent of global electricity and more than 20 percent of the world's low-carbon electricity, making it the second-largest source of low-carbon power globally.

Building new nuclear facilities takes enormous investment and lengthy planning, licensing, and construction programs. By contrast, extending the operational life of existing plants can deliver substantial additional generating capacity far more quickly. Many nuclear power plants around the world are already operating beyond their original design life thanks to comprehensive life extension programs. As electricity demand accelerates, maximizing the reliability and availability of these aging assets has become strategically important.

How Do Protective Coatings and Repair Composites Extend Nuclear Plant Life?

Industrial polymeric repair composites and protective coatings are engineered to perform in the demanding environments found within nuclear power facilities. These materials protect critical infrastructure by resisting chemical attack, erosion, and corrosion damage in balance-of-plant infrastructure, cooling systems, water treatment assets, pipework, civil structures, and auxiliary equipment.

The advantages of these polymeric solutions are practical and significant. As cold-applied materials, they eliminate the need for hot work permits, improving safety and simplifying maintenance procedures. Their ability to be applied in place helps minimize downtime and disruption to plant operations. Most importantly, their long-term resistance to corrosion, erosion, and chemical degradation enables them to protect critical assets in aggressive operating conditions. By extending the service life of equipment and reducing the frequency of repairs, these systems support more sustainable power plant maintenance strategies.

Real-World Examples: How Polymeric Solutions Solve Critical Problems

Two case studies from European nuclear facilities demonstrate how these materials solve real operational challenges. At a nuclear power station in Europe, engineers discovered severe cavitation damage on one of the plant's main cooling water pump impellers during a planned outage. Replacing the impeller would have extended the outage considerably, while welding risked distorting the component's hydrodynamic profile. Instead, technicians rebuilt the damaged areas using an epoxy repair composite, coated the entire impeller with an epoxy coating to improve hydraulic efficiency, and applied additional polyurethane resin protection to areas exposed to the greatest cavitation forces. This solution provided a durable repair and long-term protection against cavitation and erosion while restoring the impeller's hydraulic performance and extending its operational service life.

At a nuclear power plant in France, a cooling-water pipeline had suffered extensive external corrosion, resulting in a live leak at one of the welds. Because the pipeline could not be taken out of service, conventional repair methods such as grit blasting and welding were not practical. Instead, technicians sealed the leak using a surface-tolerant epoxy composite, rebuilt areas of corrosion damage with a material specifically designed for application on wet and oil-contaminated surfaces, and reinforced the pipeline using a composite wrap repair system. This approach allowed the plant to continue operating while addressing the corrosion problem.

Steps to Maintain Nuclear Infrastructure for Long-Term Reliability

• Preventive Coating Application: Apply protective polymeric coatings to pipework, cooling systems, and auxiliary equipment before corrosion damage occurs, reducing the frequency of emergency repairs and unplanned outages.
• In-Situ Repair Capability: Use cold-applied repair composites that can be applied without hot work permits, allowing maintenance teams to address damage quickly while minimizing safety risks and operational disruption.
• Condition Monitoring Programs: Implement regular inspections of critical assets to detect early signs of erosion, cavitation, or chemical degradation, enabling proactive maintenance before failures occur.
• Material Selection for Aggressive Environments: Choose polymeric systems engineered specifically for the demanding conditions inside pressurized water reactors (PWRs), pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs), and boiling water reactors (BWRs).

What Role Do New Nuclear Technologies Play Alongside Existing Plants?

While polymeric solutions extend the life of existing reactors, the nuclear industry is also advancing next-generation technologies. Small modular reactors (SMRs) represent an emerging technology that the IEA identifies as an important part of the long-term solution for meeting future electricity demand. Bluecore Energy, a maritime nuclear startup, recently raised $50 million to build its first floating nuclear system, designed to produce roughly 10 megawatts of continuous power and run for years between refuelings. The company is designing compact water-cooled reactors that sit on floating platforms and dock where grid capacity has run short, with ports, coastal infrastructure, and artificial intelligence data centers as intended customers.

Bluecore has secured its first barge and started formal regulatory engagement with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard. The company is also developing a non-fueled reactor module prototype at the Port of Long Beach to validate monitoring, sensor, and control systems. However, these emerging technologies are years away from widespread deployment, making the maintenance and extension of existing nuclear capacity essential in the near term.

How Is AI Itself Improving Nuclear Operations?

Beyond the infrastructure maintenance challenge, artificial intelligence is also being deployed to improve the control and efficiency of nuclear reactors themselves. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) announced that researchers, in collaboration with Princeton University, have developed a general algorithm for prediction and control in tokamak systems, tested at DIII-D and presented in a recent Nuclear Fusion paper. The framework, called PACMAN (Prediction and Control Using Machine Learning), aims to accommodate disparate machine learning models into an integrated system.

"PACMAN uses a flexible setup where building-block AI algorithms can be put together. You can add a new one, swap one out or run several at once without touching the rest of the system," said Egemen Kolemen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, jointly appointed with the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and PPPL.

Egemen Kolemen, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and PPPL

PACMAN typically runs in about 20 milliseconds and operates continuously, allowing it to detect small changes in plasma behavior and adjust in ways that human operators could never achieve manually. The framework was able to take complete control of DIII-D's six gyrotrons, predict tearing modes and sudden bursts of energy from the plasma's edge, detect and control waves in the plasma driven by fast particles, and adjust the plasma's density and rotation. In one experiment, a machine learning model predicted a tearing mode about 200 milliseconds in advance, allowing the plasma to be changed to avoid the instability in the first place.

The convergence of these developments reveals a critical insight: meeting AI's explosive electricity demand requires both maintaining existing nuclear infrastructure through advanced materials science and deploying cutting-edge AI tools to optimize reactor performance. While headlines focus on new reactor designs and tech company partnerships, the unglamorous work of protecting aging plants with polymeric coatings and composites may be just as important to powering the AI revolution.