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  • Nuclear Goes Small to Get Big, Another Egyptian Megaproject, Record-Breaking Undersea Tunnel, Data Center Bans

Nuclear Goes Small to Get Big, Another Egyptian Megaproject, Record-Breaking Undersea Tunnel, Data Center Bans

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Editorial Staff
April 27, 2026

 

Our latest newsletter explores the major projects and trends shaping tomorrow’s cities.

You Should Know

  • The Cold War-era Defense Production Act was invoked by the Trump administration to fast-track federal funding for oil, coal, LNG, and grid infrastructure, citing national defense and surging AI-driven energy demand.

  • Dubai has unveiled its largest transport project to date: a 42-km (26-mile) underground metro line valued at more than $9 billion.

  • The Indian state of Maharashtra, in the midst of a major urbanization boom, has signed a landmark €15 billion MoU with JW Global and other partners to advance four major clean energy and infrastructure projects. 

  • The world’s largest public monument under construction is the 101-meter Jesus Christ statue on Mount Hatis in Armenia, taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Worth Watching

Smaller, Cheaper, Faster: Nuclear Energy's New Growth Playbook

Surging energy demand has made one thing clear: renewables alone won't close the gap for a long time. That reality is fueling a resurgence in nuclear power, with small modular reactors, or SMRs, emerging as a credible, low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

A conventional nuclear plant is a massive, bespoke project, capable of generating more than 1,000 megawatts and often costing upward of $15 billion to build. SMRs flip that model. Generating 20 to 345 megawatts per unit, they are factory-manufactured, shipped to a site, and deployed in clusters. The goal is to do for nuclear what standardization did for commercial aviation: drive down costs through repetition.

The advantages of SMRs are substantial. They provide steady baseload power when wind and solar are not producing, incorporate passive safety systems that require no human intervention to shut down, and emit zero carbon. However, no commercial SMR has yet operated in the U.S. or Europe, and costs remain unproven at scale.

The SMR industry is pursuing a smarter approach to where reactors get built. Rather than fighting permitting battles on undeveloped land, developers are targeting retired coal plants, existing nuclear sites, and DOE or military facilities — brownfield sites that already come with grid connections, cooling water, and communities accustomed to industrial neighbors."

Tech giants, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have all signed nuclear power deals, and the AI buildout is a powerful tailwind. But the market extends well beyond data centers. SMRs can supply industrial heat, replace retiring coal plants, and serve remote communities.

More than a dozen SMR-focused startups have each raised tens of millions of dollars. Four companies stand out for their progress and funding.

X-energy made history last week with a $1 billion IPO, the largest nuclear public offering on record, as its shares jumped 31% on debut. Its helium-cooled Xe-100 reactor can generate high-temperature industrial heat that conventional water-cooled reactors cannot match. The bigger differentiator is its proprietary TRISO-X fuel, creating a recurring revenue stream across each reactor's 60-year lifespan. Amazon has committed to buying up to 5 gigawatts of X-energy power by 2039.

TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, is the furthest along in construction. Last week, the firm announced the start of construction on its Kemmerer Unit 1 Natrium plant in Wyoming, a utility-scale nuclear project designed to pair a 345-MW sodium-cooled reactor with energy storage that can boost output to 500 MW. The company is targeting operations by 2030. TerraPower has raised over $3 billion, with backers including Nvidia.

NuScale Power went public via a SPAC merger and was the first SMR developer to win Nuclear Regulatory Commission design approval. Its conventional water-cooled modules are a deliberate choice because familiar technology carries less regulatory risk. NuScale licenses its design to utilities rather than building plants itself, a capital-light model now anchored by a seven-state deployment deal with ENTRA1 Energy.

Kairos Power has attracted less public attention than some of its major rivals. Backed by $629 million in federal funding, its molten fluoride salt coolant and TRISO fuel pebbles promise inherent safety and high operating temperatures. Google has signed a deal to purchase 500 megawatts of Kairos power by 2035.

Egypt Announces Another Multibillion-Dollar Megaproject: The Spine

Egypt has launched a $27 billion mixed-use city east of Cairo that officials say could become a major new driver of urban growth.

The project, called The Spine, will be developed by Talaat Moustafa Group in partnership with the National Bank of Egypt. The development is planned for New Cairo, within the broader Madinaty area, and will be established as a special investment zone. According to Talaat Moustafa Group CEO Hisham Talaat Moustafa, the project’s total investment is equivalent to about 1% of Egypt’s gross domestic product.

Spanning approximately 2.4 million square meters, The Spine is designed as an integrated urban district combining residential, commercial, administrative, hospitality, retail, entertainment, and public green spaces. The plan includes 165 towers and allocates nearly 70% of the total area to green and open spaces — more than 1.5 million square meters.

Officials have positioned the project as both a real estate development and an economic growth initiative. The government expects The Spine to create more than 155,000 job opportunities, including more than 55,000 direct jobs and additional indirect positions. It is also projected to generate approximately $15.8 billion in tax revenues over time.

The project is also being framed around sustainability. Officials said The Spine is intended to align with global environmental standards through planning aimed at reducing carbon emissions, limiting noise pollution, and creating a more balanced environment for living and working.

The announcement comes as international rating agencies, including S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s, have noted progress in Egypt’s macroeconomic reforms and fiscal consolidation efforts. While no specific completion timeline has been provided, the development is expected to draw tens of millions of annual visitors.

The Spine joins a growing list of major megaprojects reshaping Egypt’s urban and economic landscape. The most prominent is the New Administrative Capital, a vast city east of Cairo designed to house government ministries, business districts, residential neighborhoods, and major civic infrastructure. The project is estimated at about $58 billion, with a planned area of up to 950 square kilometers and capacity for roughly 8 million people.

Another major example is Ras El Hekma, a Mediterranean coastal city and tourism development backed by the UAE’s ADQ. The agreement involves $35 billion in investment and has been described as one of the largest foreign direct investment deals in Egypt’s history.

Qatar has also announced roughly $30 billion in investment for a luxury tourism and residential resort on Egypt’s northwestern Mediterranean coast, with Qatari Diar leading the project. The project covers about 4,900 acres and more than 7 kilometers of coastline.

A Record-Breaking Undersea Road Tunnel Is Being Built in Norway

Norway is drilling the world's longest and deepest undersea road tunnel — a 27-kilometer (17-mile) passage beneath the Boknafjord and Kvitsøyfjord, fjords on Norway's southwestern coast.

Called Rogfast, short for "Rogaland fastforbindelse," the project is testing the limits of modern engineering in ways no tunnel has before.

When completed, it will hold four world records: the longest underwater road tunnel for regular traffic, the longest four-lane road tunnel, the deepest four-lane road tunnel, and the deepest road junction. At its lowest point, it will reach 392 meters below sea level — far deeper than the Seikan Tunnel in Japan (240 meters) or the Channel Tunnel between England and France (115 meters).

Rogfast will run south to north, connecting Randaberg Municipality near Stavanger to Bokn Municipality across the Boknafjord, replacing a ferry crossing that is vulnerable to weather delays.

The project is part of a broader effort to transform the E39 coastal highway, a 1,100-kilometer route from Kristiansand to Trondheim that currently takes 21 hours to drive and requires seven ferry crossings. Rogfast alone is expected to cut travel time between Stavanger and Bergen — Norway's fourth-largest and second-largest cities, respectively — by roughly 40 minutes.

Construction started in January 2018 but was halted in late 2019 after cost overruns led to the cancellation of existing contracts. The project was restructured and relaunched, with the first main contract signed in December 2022 with Skanska, followed by additional contracts with Implenia and Stangeland. Total project cost is now approximately $2.4 billion, and the tunnel is scheduled to open in 2033.

Among the project's most distinctive engineering features is a double roundabout carved 260 meters below sea level at the tunnel's midpoint, routing traffic onto a spur connecting to Kvitsøy, Norway's smallest municipality.

The tunnel is being built simultaneously from both ends, with crews required to meet in the middle within a margin of error of just 5 centimeters. To achieve this precision, Hexagon is providing laser scanning technology that collects 2 million data points per second, creating a digital twin of each newly excavated section that can be checked against design plans.

Saltwater intrusion has been among the biggest ongoing challenges. With excavation already reaching 300 meters below sea level, crews have encountered significant saltwater leaks and are developing improved grouting methods to seal the rock before reaching the tunnel's maximum depth.

When operational, Rogfast will carry an estimated 13,000 vehicles per day through two parallel tubes, each with two lanes of traffic, supported by longitudinal ventilation, shaft ventilation to Kvitsøy, real-time incident monitoring, and emergency cross-passages throughout.

Data Centers Are Booming. So Are the Bans

A growing movement to ban or restrict data center construction is gaining traction, with several states and municipalities moving closer to formal limits.

About a dozen states and multiple local governments have introduced legislation to limit or block new data center development. According to Data Center Watch, $156 billion worth of data center projects were blocked or delayed last year by local opposition, moratoriums, and litigation.

Resistance is largely driven by concerns over electricity demand and strain on local infrastructure. Data centers accounted for around 50% of U.S. electricity-demand growth last year, according to the IEA. Hyperscale AI facilities can use far more power than traditional data centers, with a single site potentially drawing as much electricity as 100,000 households. That demand can strain local grids and require major upgrades — costs officials and residents fear could be passed on through higher utility bills.

Communities are also raising concerns about water use. Data centers require significant cooling capacity, and their projected water demand could reach the equivalent of the indoor water needs of 18.5 million U.S. households by 2028.

Critics also point to the sector’s limited long-term job creation. While construction can provide a temporary economic boost, many multibillion-dollar data centers require relatively few permanent workers once operational, often fewer than 150 employees.

Maine nearly became the first U.S. state to impose a statewide data center moratorium, but Gov. Janet Mills vetoed the bill last Friday. It would have frozen approvals until October 2027 for facilities requiring more than 20 megawatts of power. Vermont has proposed a moratorium on AI data centers larger than 100 megawatts through July 2030, while New York lawmakers are considering a three-year halt on all data center construction.

Several cities have already taken action. The Denver City Council, for example, implemented a one-year moratorium on new data center applications, effective through May 2027, while it develops formal rules for energy consumption, water use, and zoning. In January 2026, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to enact a one-year moratorium on data center construction.

Overseas, Dublin has frozen new grid connections, with no new applications expected to be considered until at least 2028. Amsterdam has banned new data centers and expansions within the municipality through at least 2030, citing scarce land and an overloaded electrical grid.

Despite the growing pushback, opposition is unlikely to significantly slow the overall buildout. Developers can shift projects to more receptive markets, particularly Texas, which has absorbed much of the redirected investment.

Big Tech is also trying to address electricity-cost concerns, with Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and others signing a White House ratepayer-protection pledge to provide or pay for the power generation needed for AI projects.

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