While the world discusses electricity shortages caused by the artificial intelligence boom, China is testing a 10 MW mobile nuclear reactor that can be transported on an ordinary truck. It is already being called an “atomic power bank for the AI era”.
Its output is sufficient for an average AI data center. Developers claim the device can operate for decades without refueling, providing energy to remote areas, islands, ships, and computing centers.
The project is being developed by the Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The project’s chief scientific advisor, Wu Yican, says it is “the world’s first 10‑megawatt vehicle‑borne nuclear power unit”.
Context matters: China is already actively restructuring its energy sector for the AI economy. The country ranks second in the world in nuclear generation, while simultaneously building dozens of reactors and rapidly expanding its data center infrastructure.
In essence, Beijing is betting on the “AI + nuclear energy” combination as the foundation of a future industrial model. And if the experiment succeeds, mobile reactors could become a new infrastructure of the digital economy — just as oil was the infrastructure of the industrial age.
