Google announced on Monday that it has signed the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase power from small modular reactors (SMR). The acquisition will be made to meet the demand of artificial intelligence application processing centers.
Google’s deal with Kairos Power aims to bring the first small modular reactor into operation by 2030, followed by additional deployments by 2035.
The companies did not reveal financial details of the arrangement or where the plants will be built in the United States. Google said it will buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from six to seven reactors.
“We believe nuclear energy can play an important role in helping to meet our demand (…) in a clean and uninterrupted way,” said Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google.
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Technology companies this year signed several deals with nuclear power companies as artificial intelligence increases electricity demand for the first time in decades.
In March, Amazon.com purchased a nuclear-powered data center from Talen Energy. Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed an energy deal to help revive a unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the nation’s worst atomic accident in 1979.
Power demand from U.S. data centers is expected to triple by 2030, requiring about 47 gigawatts of new generating capacity, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs, which assumed natural gas, wind power and solar power will help fill the gap. .
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Kairos will need to obtain all construction and design permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), as well as permits from local agencies, a process that could take years.
Late last year, Kairos obtained a construction permit from the NRC to build a demonstration reactor in the State of Tennessee.
Small modular reactors are smaller than current reactors, with components built in a factory rather than at the plant site, which reduces construction costs.
Critics say these reactors are expensive because they may not be able to achieve the economies of scale of larger plants. Additionally, these smaller plants will likely produce long-lived nuclear waste for which the U.S. does not yet have a definitive repository.
Google said that by committing to an order book structure with Kairos, rather than buying one reactor at a time, it is sending a demand signal to the market and making a long-term investment to accelerate the development of SMRs. .
“We are confident that this new approach will improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost and on schedule,” said Mike Laufer, chief executive and co-founder of Kairos.
By Timothy Gardner
