Google Chooses Nuclear Energy to Power AI Data Centers

The new strategy of Google is the use of small nuclear reactors to power the AI data centers. These centers are powered by high energy consumption, so Google prefers to employ nuclear resources for this purpose. The partner is a company named Kairos Power, and there could be a nuclear reactor by 2030, the first of some coming available by 2035.

One of the major objectives in the energy department is to get a technique that is clean and suitable for AI. Michael Terrell of Google says that this initiative also ensures the accessibility of new sources of electricity needful to AI technologies. Nuclear energy, which emits almost no carbon dioxide and thus reduces greenhouse effect, is an ideal solution for tech companies fighting global warming, mainly due to its continuous production around the clock.

According to a report, Kairos Power has focused on constructing a new kind of small nuclear reactor that uses molten salt to cool it not by water as traditional reactors. They already started building a demo reactor in Tennessee, but in order to move the project forward, more approvals are required from a number of government agencies.

Data centers consume a lot of power and produce a lot of heat, especially those that are used for AI, and are thus cooler. It is expected by the experts that energy used by data centers will grow more than twice as much at the end of this decade.

More and more IT-companies are attracted by nuclear energy. Not long ago, Microsoft struck a deal to restart a nuclear-run power plant and Amazon is intending to use nuclear energy to power a data center of theirs in the near future.

Even though nuclear power has a less dirty environment than fossil fuels, a nuclear reaction produces radioactive waste which is bothering the people. Thus, nuclear power is one option to be discussed.

Google’s affiliation with Kairos Power represents the huge interest in nuclear energy in the tech sector as alternative methods to power their operations environmentally are looked for by different firms.