The Reference Guide
What data centers actually consume and how it is measured, the forecast revisions that changed the conversation, the two interconnection queues, what a small modular reactor is and which licensing instrument means what, a plant-by-plant status table, co-location and the FERC fight, fuel and enrichment, the economics and the one project that was canceled, the waste argument, and what to watch next. Every quiz below comes from a section of it.
Open the Reference GuideHow the Power Actually Gets There
The connection, rather than the reactor. Where the load actually is and how big the campuses really are, measured rather than announced, and what is planned. Then the four routes that join a data center to a source of electricity: the generator queue and how long it takes, the large-load queue nobody had a federal process for, co-location and the FERC fight that settled it, and buying the output of a reactor that already exists — which is fastest, and adds no electricity to the system at all.
Open the Connection GuideThe Quizzes
In the order the guide covers them. Each one stands on its own — start wherever the subject interests you.
The Demand
How much electricity data centers actually use and who measured it, why training and inference are different loads, the two flat decades that just ended, what an interconnection queue really counts, and the trade between cooling power and cooling water.
The Reactors
What makes a reactor small and modular, the design families and how they differ, the licensing instruments and what each one actually authorizes, where every US project stands, fuel and enrichment, passive safety, and waste.
Grid and Money
Co-location and the fight in front of FERC, the purchase agreements and restarts that exist on paper and the ones that do not, what nuclear costs and why, the alternatives an operator reaches for first, and the strongest version of the skeptical case.
Each quiz expands one part of the reference guide into 50 questions grouped into six themes. Options are reshuffled every time you start, and every set was checked against all the others so no question is asked twice. One deliberate constraint runs through all of them: the four options are kept close in length, so the longest answer is never a giveaway. Across all 150 questions the correct answer is the longest option 21 percent of the time — which is roughly what chance would give you.
This subject moves fast and is reported loosely. A design certification is not a plant. A construction permit is not permission to operate. An announcement is not a contract, and a signed contract is not a megawatt delivered. Every status claim in the guide and in these questions is placed in one of five categories — announced, application filed, licensed, under construction, operating — and dated. As of August 2026 no small modular reactor is operating in the United States, and questions about project status are written to test that distinction rather than any one project's current position, because the positions move and the distinction does not.