Google will buy nuclear energy from the American start-up Kairos Power, which will be produced by small new generation reactors, called SMR (small modular reactor), the American technology giant announced on Monday.
The contract provides for the commissioning of the first Kairos SMR by 2030, with ramp-up until 2035, to provide an additional response to the enormous electricity needs of the Alphabet subsidiary.
Google declined to provide an amount for this transaction.
The emergence of remote computing (cloud computing) has increased the energy consumption of major players in the sector, such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, due to the use of server storage centers (data centers).
These have become even more essential with the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which requires colossal quantities of data and legions of semiconductors to exploit them.
To ensure that they have sufficient electricity resources, the big names in the “cloud” enter into agreements with renewable energy suppliers, particularly in nuclear power.
Microsoft too
At the end of September, Microsoft unveiled a partnership with the American group Constellation Energy which provides for the reopening of a reactor at the Three Mile Island power plant, in Pennsylvania.
The second reactor at Three Mile Island has been shut down since 1979, the year during which it experienced the most serious incident in American civilian nuclear power.
SMRs, such as the Kairos FHR, are new generation reactors, none of which are yet operational in the United States.
Although the cost of developing prototypes is high, they are expected to be much less expensive, in the long term, than conventional nuclear power plants, because they can be produced on an assembly line.
Another start-up, NuScale, was the first to see its SMR approved, but its most advanced project, in Idaho, was canceled at the end of 2023.
At the end of 2023, Kairos received the green light from the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to start work on its first experimental reactor, construction of which it began in July, in Oak Ridge (Tennessee).
It aims to put this first SMR into service in 2027.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
