Kirsty Gogan to Chair Nuclear Energy and AI Plenary at OECD NEA and U.S. DOE's Roadmaps to New Nuclear 2026
OECD Nuclear Energy Agency & U.S. Department of Energy Paris, France September 17–18, 2026
Kirsty Gogan, LucidCatalyst Managing Partner and Terra Praxis Founding Director & Co-CEO, has been invited by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the U.S. Department of Energy to chair Morning Plenary 2, "Nuclear Energy and AI Symbiosis," on day one of the fourth Roadmaps to New Nuclear Ministerial Conference.
Roadmaps to New Nuclear is the leading government-industry forum for turning nuclear ambition into deployment at scale and speed. This year's conference brings ministers from more than 30 countries to Paris, alongside senior government officials and CEOs from 60 leading companies, investors, and stakeholders from across the nuclear sector. The agenda is squarely practical: workforce development, supply chain readiness, financing, fuel supply security, regulatory preparedness, and project delivery.
Kirsty's plenary will dig into one of the defining dynamics of this moment: how nuclear-powered AI and AI-enhanced nuclear energy systems can reinforce one another. As AI drives an unprecedented surge in computing and power demand, nuclear is emerging as a critical enabler of that growth; at the same time, AI is starting to compress the licensing, construction, and operating timelines that have historically slowed nuclear deployment. The panel brings together Xavier Ursat (Group Senior Executive Vice President, EDF), Adrian Anderson (Head of Global Energy, Equinix), Seung-Yeol Lim (Senior Vice President, Overseas Business Development, KHNP), and Vladimir Troy (Vice President for AI Infrastructure, Nvidia) to assess how nuclear-AI deployment scenarios could play out over the next 5-10 years.
Day one also features welcome remarks from OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann and U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright; a special address on nuclear energy and energy security from Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal; a fireside chat on regulatory modernization between NEA Director-General William D. Magwood, IV and U.S. NRC Chairman Ho K. Nieh; and the Accelerating SMR Summit, with breakout sessions covering power, non-power applications, fuel recycling, maritime applications, financing, and fuel supply security.
Building on a Track Record with the NEA
Kirsty chairs the OECD NEA's Nuclear Innovation 2050 Advisory Panel (IAP), a senior international body drawing experts from government, academia, and industry—including the U.S. Department of Energy, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, France's CEA, EPRI, the University of Michigan, Suncor Energy, and the Dalton Nuclear Institute—to guide the policy, regulatory, and technology conditions needed to bring advanced nuclear to commercial scale. That work runs directly parallel to LucidCatalyst and Terra Praxis's mission and the five preconditions for lift-off identified in the Ten-Terawatt Initiative.
At last year's Ministerial (Paris, September 2025), Kirsty chaired the plenary on the role of AI in the future of nuclear energy, convening senior decision-makers from over 30 countries. Panelists from Caelus, Data4, Equinix, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia explored how AI can accelerate nuclear growth—from predictive maintenance and safety monitoring to clearing licensing barriers—while addressing nuclear's fit as 24/7 baseload power for the roughly 140 GW of AI-driven data center demand expected by 2030. Microsoft discussed its own dual role, restarting Three Mile Island while co-developing AI-based licensing tools with Terra Praxis; Google outlined the policy reforms needed to bring SMR partnerships to commercial deployment by 2030.
Kirsty and the LucidCatalyst/Terra Praxis teams have also taken leading roles at recent NEA events, including a joint keynote with Microsoft's Sam Mathew and a fireside chat with nuclear regulators from France and the UK at the NEA's first International Conference on Excellence in Nuclear Construction (London, June 2025).
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