Making sense of Google's nuclear-powered AI ambitions
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Let's spend more time with Google's move to support small modular nuclear reactors to help power the AI-fueled data center build-out.
Catch up quick: Google inked a deal with Kairos Power for deployment of 500 megawatts' worth of SMRs by 2035, with the first targeted to arrive by 2030.
- The planned 75MW size of their reactors suggests a half-dozen projects, though some could be next to each other.
Why it matters: It's Google's first nuclear foray as the tech giant — and its peers — hunt for zero-carbon power to fuel energy-thirsty AI data centers.
A few takeaways...
Big tech is spreading the love. So far Microsoft is staking revival of a Three Mile Island reactor. It's also exploring fusion.
- Amazon plans to co-locate a data center campus with a separate large, existing reactor.
- And now Google is supporting SMRs, while Oracle is also exploring small reactors.
- Look for more kinds of deals as different tech giants find different ways to back nuclear. And Michael Terrell, Google's senior director for energy and climate, signaled to reporters that the company could explore multiple nuclear strategies.
Google's plan is vague right now. The company and Kairos offered no specifics on the costs, financial timelines, or other money matters. Nor are there location details.
- But that said, they emphasized that it's a structure called an "order book" that, per DOE, aims to support repeated deployments of one design.
- "The learnings that come from building the same reactor technology multiple times over, will lead to lower costs and greater scale," Terrell said.
It could have effects beyond Google. Power researcher Jesse Jenkins said Google is using its purchasing power to "create early market pull to help commercialize advanced clean firm power technologies."
- Jenkins, posting on X, cites Google's separate work with geothermal startup Fervo Energy (and noted that Google supports his Princeton research lab).
- Another big tech player going nuclear could help explain why the share prices of SMR startups Oklo and NuScale jumped yesterday.
Reality check: SMRs face big regulatory, financial and other hurdles. And for now, the wider data center build-out looks bullish for fossil fuels.
- "Natural gas will be critical to meeting surging power demand for data centers amid a boom in demand for new computing capacity through the rest of this decade," Moody's Ratings said in a new report, noting its role complementing intermittent renewables.
The bottom line: Tech giants have deep pockets and face strong pressure to fuel AI without lots of new emissions, and that could help knock those SMR barriers down.
