SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Google on Monday signed a deal to get electricity from small nuclear reactors to help power artificial intelligence.
The agreement to buy energy from reactors built by Kairos Power came just weeks after word that Three Mile Island, the site of America’s worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide energy to Microsoft.
“We believe that nuclear energy has a critical role to play in supporting our clean growth and helping to deliver on the progress of AI,” Google senior director of energy and climate said during a briefing.
“The grid needs these kinds of clean, reliable sources of energy that can support the build out of these technologies.”
No financial details were disclosed.
Microsoft use of Three Mile Island’s nuclear energy will bolster a power grid covering 13 states.
This area faces severe strain from data centers’ massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase.
Amazon’s AWS agreed in March to invest USD650 million in a data center campus powered by another Pennsylvania nuclear plant.
Nuclear energy has staunch opponents due to concerns about radioactive waste disposal, the potential for catastrophic accidents, and the high costs associated with plant construction and decommissioning.
The 1979 partial meltdown of Unit 2 at Three Mile Island caused panic in the United States and brought the expansion of nuclear energy to a standstill.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed it the “most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history,” though it noted no detectable health effects on workers or the public from the small radioactive releases.
