Google will go nuclear to generate vitality to energy its AI knowledge centres

With its Gemini chatbot and Pixel AI phone software, it’s fair to say Google has an obsessive focus on artificial intelligence. 

But all that advanced computational power requires millions of computers, known as ‘servers’, housed inside data centres across the world that operate 24/7.

Now, in an attempt to cater to its vast AI needs, Google is going nuclear.  

The tech giant has signed a deal with California-based nuclear firm Kairos Power to build new nuclear reactors to supply its US data centres with energy. 

Although the location of these reactors is yet to be revealed, Google said the first will be operational in 2030, with more to follow by 2035. 

In a blog post, Michael Terrell, external, senior director for energy and climate at Google, said the deal will ‘accelerate the clean energy transition across the US’.  

However, the companies did not reveal financial details of the agreement or where in the US the plants would be built.

‘Nuclear solutions offer a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands with carbon-free energy every hour of every day,’ Terrell said.  

‘Advancing these power sources in close partnership with supportive local communities will rapidly drive the decarbonization of electricity grids around the world.’ 

Google’s data centres are designed to cope with the enormous power, storage and cooling requirements of its AI technology, such as its Gemini chatbot and Pixel AI phone software, as well as cloud storage. 

But AI – which uses a lot of computing power and in turn electricity 24/7 – is especially pushing up the firm’s energy use and is making cutting emissions ‘challenging’, the company said. 

Google operates around 20 data centres in North America and more globally, and has acknowledged the need to ‘procure clean energy to meet our electricity needs’. 

In 2020, the tech giant set a goal to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy on every grid where it operates by 2030. 

To do this, the company is turning to Kairos Power, which uses a form of energy called nuclear fission just like other existing nuclear power plants.

During nuclear fission, a neutron collides with a uranium atom and splits it, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation. 

In nuclear power stations, the heat caused by fission is used to boil water into steam, which is then used to turn a turbine that drives generators to make electricity.

Nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, although its inclusion as a climate-friendly ‘renewable’ energy source is debated. 

Nuclear energy itself is a renewable energy source, but the material used in fission reactions – uranium – is a non-renewable. 

Kairos Power, which was was founded in 2016, is building so-called ‘small-modular reactors’ (SMRs) which are designed to be built in a factory and then shipped to sites for installation. 

Kairos Power says its SMRs will use a molten fluoride salt as a coolant instead of water because of its ‘outstanding capability to transfer heat at high temperature’.

However, critics believe SMRs will be unduly expensive because they may not be able to achieve the economy of scale of larger plants. 

In addition, they will likely produce long-lasting nuclear waste – primarily spent uranium fuel – for which the country does not yet have a final repository.

Google said it will back the construction of seven SMRs from Kairos Power that will supply energy to its data centres, although the deal will depend on Kairos getting full permitting from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and local agencies. 

‘The NRC is ready to efficiently and appropriately review applications for new reactors,’ said Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesperson. 

Late last year, Kairos Power got a construction permit from the NRC to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, but it needs fresh design and construction permits from NRC for Google’s upcoming reactors. 

Technology firms have signed several recent agreements with nuclear power companies this year as AI boosts power demand.

In March, Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data centre in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy for $650 million.

Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed a deal to resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst US nuclear accident in 1979.

US data centre power use is expected to roughly triple between 2023 and 2030 and will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs.