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January 17, 2025
Google is going nuclear to fuel energy for its AI data centers

In an attempt to cater to its vast AI needs, Google is going nuclear. And why not? According to the US Department of Energy, nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year. That’s about nearly 2 times more as natural gas and coal units, and almost 3 times or more reliable than wind and solar plants.

The tech giant has signed a deal with California-based nuclear firm Kairos Power to build new nuclear reactors to supply its US data centers with energy. Although the location of these reactors is yet to be revealed, Google said the first will be operational in 2030, with more to follow by 2035. Today, Google has an obsessive focus on artificial intelligence with its Gemini chatbot and Pixel AI phone software. But all that advanced computational power requires millions of computers, known as ‘servers’, housed inside data centers across the world that operate 24/7. In a blog post, Michael Terrell, external, senior director for energy and climate at Google, said the deal will “accelerate the clean energy transition across the US.” However, the companies did not reveal financial details of the agreement or where in the US the plants would be built. “Nuclear solutions offer a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands with carbon-free energy every hour of every day,” Terrell added.

The Google officer further said: “Advancing these power sources in close partnership with supportive local communities will rapidly drive the decarbonization of electricity grids around the world.”

Google’s data centers are designed to cope with the enormous power, storage and cooling requirements of its AI technology, such as its Gemini chatbot and Pixel AI phone software, as well as cloud storage. But AI – which uses a lot of computing power and in turn electricity 24/7 – is especially pushing up the firm’s energy use and is making cutting emissions “challenging,” the company said. Google operates around 20 data centers in North America and more globally, and has acknowledged the need to “procure clean energy to meet our electricity needs.”

In 2020, the tech giant set a goal to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy on every grid where it operates by 2030. To do this, the company is turning to Kairos Power, which uses a form of energy called nuclear fission just like other existing nuclear power plants.

What is nuclear energy?

Nuclear energy comes from the binding energy that is stored in the center of an atom and holds it together. To release the energy, the atom has to be split into smaller atoms — a process called fission. During a reaction the smaller atoms don’t need as much binding energy to hold them together, so the extra energy is released as heat and radiation. In nuclear power stations, the heat caused by fission is used to boil water into steam. The steam is then used to turn a turbine that drives generators to make electricity.

Reference: Google will go nuclear to generate energy to power its AI data centers (msn.com)

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