Google announced Monday it inked a deal with Kairos Power to purchase nuclear energy from a fleet of small modular reactors, a kind of advanced nuclear reactor yet to be seen in the U.S.
Two days later, Amazon announced it signed a series of deals to invest in advanced nuclear reactors, including an agreement with Northwest Energy to build four small modular reactors in Washington.
Nuclear energy operator Constellation Energy announced last month it reached a deal with Microsoft to reopen Three Mile Island to power the tech giant’s data centers for two decades starting in 2028.
The increased energy demands of AI have resulted in greater emissions for Big Tech companies at a time when they are attempting to fulfill promises to become carbon-neutral or negative.
Matt Crozat, executive director of strategy and policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group representing the industry, said nuclear energy is a particularly good fit for tech companies because one plant can produce a lot of power at a time, which is needed to keep AI going.
“It takes a lot of energy to run big data centers, and so being able to think in bigger chunks of carbon-free power, like a nuclear station, begins to make sense. If these were very small or niche applications, you might not have the same need,” Crozat said.
Read more from Rachel and our colleague Julia Shapero at The Hill.
