Drax, xAI and the reactor queue: AI demand reshapes how power gets built

The newest number in the power business is not a reactor count. It is a gigawatt of compute. On 3 November the Guardian reported that Drax, the FTSE 250 owner of the UK's largest power station, has struck a £20bn deal with infrastructure investor Brookfield and AI platform Radiant. The plan is to build a datacentre on the Drax site in North Yorkshire. Eventual capacity will exceed 1GW, with first operations from the first quarter of 2028 at up to 100MW.

The plant burns woody biomass pellets and produces almost 5% of UK electricity, according to the Guardian. The Guardian notes that analysts call it the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Drax says the carbon is absorbed by regrowing trees. Ministers have promised it a "much more limited role" after 2027, when subsidies fall to half the current £2m a day through 2031. Drax shares rose almost 9% to a market value near £3bn.

Read the two stories side by side and the shape of the problem appears.

The same day, Tom's Hardware reported that xAI is using eight converted jet engine turbines to power a Mississippi datacentre. The permits allow a 25% higher limit for volatile organic compounds. The Southern Environmental Law Center has challenged Mississippi's approval. It argues xAI has not guaranteed the turbines meet emissions standards for pollutants including formaldehyde, and accuses it of undercounting projected emissions. That is the gap batteries are meant to fill. Canary Media reported on 3 November on a Georgetown and Duke report. The report argues storage is cleaner, cheaper and faster to deploy than gas for datacentres. US utilities plan more than 60GW of new gas plants for datacentre demand, and around 90GW of behind-the-meter gas generators have been proposed. Batteries hedge stranded-asset risk, the authors argue, because they are modular and can be scaled back if AI demand does not arrive.

Nuclear's queue gets longer

Nuclear sits further out, and the queue is lengthening. Nikkei Asia reported on 1 November that reactors under construction globally have risen to 79 on AI demand. Korean outlets put the buildout at a 40-year high. In the US, NucNet reported on 2 November that the regulator completed its safety review for X-energy's Xe-100 plant. Construction Review reported the same day on a federal review of a $400M proposal for small reactors at Palisades. Canary Media reported on 28 October that the Department of Energy announced a $5B loan to Constellation for nuclear uprates.

The financing side is messier.

The Korea Times reported on 1 November that Seoul would launch an emergency response system for the Czech nuclear project. Businesskorea reported on 2 November that Daewoo E&C had asked the trade ministry to mediate in the dispute. Anadolu Ajansı put the project's value at $17.5B on 2 November. Korean coverage describes talks collapsing. The government says it has no authority to mediate, according to Businesskorea. China is not waiting. World Nuclear News reported on 2 November that first concrete was poured for unit 5 at the Haiyang plant, part of a Phase III expansion. The same outlet reported on 2 November that PEJ applied for an early works permit for Poland's Lubiatowo-Kopalino plant. Elsewhere, Qazinform reported on 2 November that a Kazakh steelmaker will produce rebar for the country's nuclear plant. open.kg reported on 3 November that sites for a third Kazakh plant have been named.

Where the electrons actually go

Datacentre engineering is moving faster than any of this.

Tom's Hardware reported on 3 November that Envision Energy has completed what it calls the first commercial 800V DC power system. The system sits at its Galaxy AI datacentre in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia. It converts directly from 10kV medium-voltage AC and scales toward 3GW. That is a smaller footprint and higher density, not a new source of generation. The supply chain feeding these sites is also consolidating. PV Magazine reported on 3 November that Shenzhen Nanshan Power plans a 51% to 70% cash stake in Trina Solar's tracker unit. Trina posted a CNY 1.94bn net loss for the first nine months of 2026. The same outlet reported on 3 November that Yingfa Ruineng opened a 7.5GW TOPCon cell plant in Indonesia.

None of this settles the central question. A 1GW datacentre on a biomass site with shrinking subsidies, jet engines in Mississippi and 79 reactors under construction are three answers to one demand curve. Only one of them arrives before 2028.