Google announced Monday that it had 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.
The tech giant was not shy about the driver behind the deal.
“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth,” Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director of energy and climate, wrote in a blog post.
“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,” he added.
Just two days later, Amazon announced it had 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.
The e-commerce and cloud-computing giant also reached an agreement with Dominion Energy in Virginia to explore the development of small modular reactors and led a $500 million financing round for X-energy, an advanced nuclear reactor and fuel company.
The deals from Amazon and Google are unique in that they tap into next-generation nuclear technology. However, they follow a flurry of other nuclear agreements struck by large tech firms over the past year.
Nuclear energy operator Constellation Energy announced last month that it had 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 facility was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, the worst accident in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear generation. It was retired five years ago due to declining revenues.
Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) also purchased a data center campus for $650 million that will receive power directly from an adjacent nuclear plant.
AI requires significant amounts of energy, with a single ChatGPT inquiry requiring nearly 10 times the energy of a typical Google search. Other forms of generative AI, like image generation, require even more energy.
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.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
