Google Leverages Nuclear Energy for Cutting-Edge AI Data Centers

Google and Kairos Power are working together to speed up the use of clean nuclear energy in AI data centres. The company plans to open its first plant by 2030.

Google has agreed to supply its artificial intelligence (AI) data hubs with a huge amount of energy through small nuclear reactors.

Because of the deal with Kairos Power, the company says it will use the first plant this decade and have more up and running by 2035. Both companies didn’t say how much the deal is worth or where the plants will be built.

These days, more and more tech companies are looking to nuclear power to power the huge data centers that power AI.

Google’s senior director for energy and climate, Michael Terrell, said that AI systems need new power sources to run on the grid. This deal speeds up the development of a new technology that will help meet our energy needs reliably and cleanly. It also helps everyone use AI to its fullest potential.

Jeff Olson, executive chairman of Kairos, said that the deal with Google is important to speed up the commercialization of advanced nuclear energy by showing that a solution that is key to decarbonizing power lines is both technically and commercially viable.

The first permission in 50 years to build a new type of nuclear reactor was given to Kairos Power in California last year. The company started building a test reactor in Tennessee in July. The new company focuses on making smaller reactors that cool with liquid fluoride salt instead of water, which is what most nuclear plants do. As the tech industry tries to cut down on emissions while using more energy, nuclear power, which gives electricity 24 hours a day and is almost completely free of carbon, is becoming more and more appealing.

Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs says that by the end of the decade, data hubs will use more than twice as much energy as they do now. To keep their tools cool, AI data centers need a lot of electricity, according to John Moore, Industry Editor for the website TechTarget. Specialized gear that needs a lot of power and makes a lot of heat is in these data centers.

As part of their plan to move away from fossil fuels, the US joined a group of countries at the UN Climate Change Conference last year that want to triple their nuclear energy potential by 2050. Critics, on the other hand, say that nuclear power is dangerous and creates radioactive garbage that lasts for a long time.

Microsoft reached a deal last month to get the Three Mile Island power plant back up and running. This is where America’s worst nuclear accident happened in 1979. In March, Amazon said it would buy a data hub in Pennsylvania that would be powered by nuclear power.