Tech giants are increasingly looking to nuclear reactors to power their energy-hungry data centers. Amazon and Microsoft each signed major deals with U.S. nuclear power plants this year. Both Microsoft and Google have expressed interest in the next generation of small modular reactors that are still in development.
New AI data centers require large amounts of electricity, pushing companies further away from their climate goals as carbon emissions rise. Nuclear reactors have the potential to solve both problems. As a result, big tech companies are breathing new life into America’s aging nuclear reactors while also backing emerging nuclear technologies that have yet to prove their worth.
“Certainly, the industry’s prospects are brighter today than they were five years ago and 10 years ago,” said Mark Morey, senior adviser for power analysis at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.
“Certainly, the future of the industry is brighter today”
Most of the United States’ aging nuclear fleet entered service in the 1970s and 1980s. But the industry faces headwinds after high-profile accidents such as Three Mile Island and Japan’s Fukushima disaster. Nuclear plants are also expensive to build and are generally less flexible than natural gas plants, which currently make up the largest share of the U.S. electricity mix. Gas-fired power plants can ramp up and down power generation more quickly as demand for electricity rises and falls.
Nuclear power plants usually provide stable “baseload” power. This makes it an attractive power source for data centers. Unlike manufacturing or other industries that operate during daytime business hours, data centers operate around the clock.
“When people are sleeping and offices are closed, our usage is down. [electricity]”One thing that’s a good match for nuclear power and data centers is that they require almost 24/7 power,” Morey said.
This consistency also sets nuclear power apart from wind and solar power, which weaken depending on the weather or the time of day. Over the past five years or so, many technology companies have accelerated climate goals, pledging to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions.
However, the increased energy demands of new AI tools are pushing these goals further out of reach in some cases. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have all seen their greenhouse gas emissions climb in recent years. Harvesting electricity from nuclear reactors is one way companies are trying to lower their carbon emissions.
This is a feat that has never been accomplished before in the United States
Microsoft signed an agreement in September to buy power from the shuttered Three Mile Island. “This agreement is an important milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid and support our commitment to becoming carbon negative,” Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s vice president of energy, said in a press release at the time.
The plant is scheduled to resume operations by 2028, an unprecedented feat in the United States. Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation, which owns the plant, said the plant “closed early due to poor economic conditions” in 2019. But the outlook for nuclear power is now more positive than it has been in years as companies look for sources of electricity without carbon pollution.
In March, Amazon Web Services purchased a data center campus powered by the nearby Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania. The $650 million deal ensures power supply to the nation’s sixth-largest nuclear facility, of which there are currently 54.
Google is considering purchasing nuclear power for its data centers as part of its sustainability plans. “Clearly, the trajectory of AI investments increases the scale of the tasks required,” Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in an interview. Nikkei Index This week. “We are now looking at additional investment, whether it’s solar power or evaluating technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors.”
He was referring to the next generation of reactors still under development and not expected to be ready for grid connection until the 2030s at the earliest. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified the advanced small modular reactor design for the first time last year. These advanced reactors are approximately one-tenth to one-quarter the size of their older predecessors; their size and modular design should make them easier and cheaper to build. They may also be more flexible than large nuclear plants in adjusting their power generation to changes in demand.
One of them is Bill Gates, who is fully committed to nuclear energy. He is the founder and chairman of TerraPower, a company that develops small modular reactors. Last year, Microsoft released a job listing for a principal project manager to lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy, which includes small modular reactors.
Bill Gates is one of them, fully investing in nuclear energy
“I firmly believe that nuclear energy can help us solve the climate problem, which is very, very important,” Gates said in an interview. edge last month.
This week, the U.S. Department of Energy released a new report predicting that U.S. nuclear power capacity could triple by 2050. Power demand in the United States is expected to rise. Growing demand is changing the outlook for nuclear energy, the report said. Just a few years ago, utilities were shutting down nuclear reactors. Now, reports say, they are extending the life of the reactors by up to 80 years and plan to restart closed reactors.
“There’s reason to think that technology companies could spark a new wave of investment in nuclear energy in the U.S. and around the world. There’s a lot of discussion in the industry about the idea,” Ed Crooks, senior vice president and head of thought leadership for the Americas at Wood Mackenzie, told this week’s wrote a blog post.
This does not necessarily mean that nuclear energy development in the United States will be smooth sailing. New reactor designs and plans to reopen shuttered nuclear power plants still need regulatory approval. Plans to build older power plants and new designs face soaring costs and delays. Amazon is already facing opposition to its nuclear energy plans in Pennsylvania over concerns it could end up increasing electricity costs for other consumers. The nuclear energy industry still faces headwinds due to the impact of uranium mining on nearby communities and concerns over where radioactive waste is stored.
“This is an interesting time and challenging in a lot of ways,” Morey said. “We’ll see what happens.”
