Large Tech’s large wager on nuclear energy to gas synthetic intelligence

It might need appeared like one of many weirder headlines of 2024: Microsoft is paying $1.6 billion to restart Three Mile Island. That is the nuclear energy plant in Pennsylvania whose reactor #2 had a partial meltdown in 1979. There have been no accidents, and no one died, nevertheless it set the nuclear business again years. Solely two new vegetation have been began since that accident.

“That is hallowed floor within the nuclear business,” stated Joe Dominguez, the CEO of Constellation Vitality, which owns about half of America’s 54 nuclear vegetation (together with Three Mile Island). “It is a place the place we realized and bought higher.”

He says that, on account of the 1979 accident, there have been hundreds of modifications in protocols and procedures relating to nuclear energy. “The factor that folks neglect is that there was one other reactor on the web site,” he stated. “That web site, that reactor, continued to function till 2019, when it was closed for financial causes. Low cost pure gasoline, low demand, subsidization of various applied sciences within the enterprise, [and] no coverage supporting nuclear induced vegetation to begin retiring.”

So, what’s Microsoft’s curiosity?

All of the Large Tech corporations have bold objectives to combat the local weather disaster. That features Google, Apple and Microsoft, which have every pledged to achieve internet zero carbon emissions. They had been making progress, too; every has invested billions in wind and photo voltaic vitality.

After which, then synthetic intelligence got here alongside. AI information facilities require big quantities of electrical energy.  Large Tech realized that they would not make their emissions objectives with out taking energy into their very own fingers.

Dominguez stated, “Microsoft goes to take pleasure in the good thing about the dependable, clear vitality for 20 years.”

He says reopening the present Three Mile Island facility could be faster and cheaper than developing a brand-new nuclear plant. “A minimum of 10 instances cheaper than constructing a brand new plant,” he stated. “And we expect we may get it stepping into about three years, versus the final plant that was constructed, [which] took virtually 10 years.”

However for those who’re a tech firm, what do you do if you do not have a recently-retired nuclear plant helpful? You develop new ones. Solely weeks after Microsoft’s announcement, each Amazon and Google introduced main investments in nuclear energy.

Google is supplementing its already monumental inexperienced vitality investments with a brand new type of nuclear, referred to as small modular reactors. “These usually are not the nuclear energy vegetation of yesterday, with the very massive cooling towers,” stated Michael Terrell, who heads Google’s decarbonization efforts. “These are a lot smaller services. However as a result of they’re modular, you possibly can stack them collectively to expand energy vegetation.

He anticipates the primary superior nuclear reactor will probably be on-line by 2030. “And we’re not going to do only one reactor, however we hope to purchase from what will probably be a collection of reactors that comply with that,” Terrell stated.

Nuclear energy nonetheless is not excellent; it nonetheless produces waste that must be safely saved. However not like photo voltaic and wind, nuclear energy is all the time on, which is crucial to these AI information facilities.

So, Google is funding an organization referred to as Kairos Energy to design and construct this new technology of reactors. Kairos is constructing three small demonstration vegetation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the very spot the place uranium was processed for the primary atomic bomb.

CEO Mike Laufer says that his reactors do not use gas rods; they use gas pebbles, in regards to the dimension of golf balls – principally graphite, with tiny kernels of uranium. And every pebble has as a lot energy capability as 4 tons of coal.

And the way a lot carbon dioxide emissions, in comparison with coal? “Zero,” Laufer stated.

The Kairos reactors additionally run at decrease energy and decrease strain than conventional reactors, which implies decrease danger.

Nicely, this all sounds nice! However what is the catch?  

“There’s just one drawback with small modular reactors: They do not actually exist,” stated George Washington College professor Sharon Squassoni, who spent 15 years researching nuclear security for the federal government. She thinks Large Tech corporations is likely to be in over their heads. “I feel they will discover out fairly shortly that it takes means too lengthy and it is means too costly,” she stated. “I feel we will see simply how sturdy their commitments are to wash vitality futures.”

“So, you are saying they might have to show to burning stuff [for power]?” I requested.

“I am fairly certain they are going to,” Squassoni replied.

“Do you suppose there’s just a little little bit of tech-bro overconfidence therein?”

“Oh, fully, fully!” she laughed.

Kairos’ Mike Laufer admitted, “Sure, it is actually onerous. I’ll completely agree with anybody. However we’re doing it at smaller scale to begin, after which constructing on that sooner or later.”

Joe Dominguez’s workforce is getting Three Mile Island prepared for Microsoft, together with renaming the plant the Crane Clear Vitality Heart. And if AI is igniting a renaissance in American nuclear, he says: full steam forward.

I requested, “Why do all new vegetation take a lot longer and price a lot greater than projected?”

“Trustworthy reply? We do not construct sufficient of them,” Dominguez stated. “You do not wish to construct a novel design; you wish to do type of a cookie-cutter, one-after-another design.”

“Is it properly understood in authorities and the business that for those who begin doing the identical design time and again, we are able to get there sooner and cheaper?”

“It is most likely the very best understood thought,” Dominguez stated. “It is understood by each Republicans and Democrats, which is a tough factor to say about something! Everyone understands that for those who construct a standard design, you construct a bunch of them.”

“So, you suppose we’ll get there?”

“I do.”

Google’s Michael Terrell agrees, and believes his firm will make its zero-carbon purpose by 2030. “It’s an extremely bold purpose: 24/7 carbon-free vitality in every single place we function each means all over the world,” he stated. “But it surely’s one thing we’re working very onerous to attain, and we hope to get there.”

      
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Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Remington Korper.

      
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