OKLO CEO Jacob Dewitte discusses the use of nuclear energy to drive different areas of technology on ‘The Claman Countdown’.
Google, Kairos Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority have agreed to deliver 50 megawatt nuclear energy to data centers in Tennessee and Alabama.
The companies say that the deal will help meet the rising American energy demand and promote the role of the nation in the next generation of nuclear energy.
According to the agreement, Kairos’s Hermes 2 -factory in Oak Ridge will feed up to 50 megawatts in the TVA grid that serves the facilities of Google.
The deal makes TVA the first utility to buy electricity from a Gen IV reactor. It also marks the first deployment of Hermes 2 under the wider pact of Kairos with Google to deliver 500 megawatts by 2035. Kairos plans to stimulate the output of Hermes 2 from 28 to 50 megawatts from 2030.
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In October, Google signed a deal with Kairos to buy nuclear energy from ‘multiple’ small modular reactors in development.
The reactors “will be placed in relevant service areas to deliver clean energy to Google Data Centers” from 203, said Kairos Power at the time.
Google said this week that the reactor will deliver electricity to its data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama.
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Rijen Servers fill Data Hall B in the Fens Fort Data Center in Texas. A company in Dallas is planning a data center near Benbrook. (Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images/Getty images)
“With this next step we create a three -part solution where energy customers, utilities and technology developers work together to promote new technologies that can help meet the growing energy needs of the world with reliable, affordable capacity,” said Google.
“In this first phase of the collaboration we will buy through TVA Schone Energie attributes from the factory to help our data centers in the region feed with locally produced clean energy, every hour of every day,” the company added.
The energy-hungry data centers from Big Tech, fed by generative artificial intelligence, require huge amounts of electricity.
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The Shuttered Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, located in the middle of the Susquehanna -River, in Middletown, Pennsylvania, US, on Wednesday 16 October 2024. Constellation Energy Corp., the owner of the Shuttered Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant, (Heather Khalifa / Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
These record energy needs have pushed the American power consumption to new highlights and fueled the demand for nuclear of the next generation.
The Google-Kairos deal ultimately supports 500 megawatts advanced nuclear capacity-genoeg to handle around 350,000 houses.
Google is not the only one who turns to nuclear.
Microsoft concluded a 20-year-old electricity purchase agreement last year with Constellation that could start the reactor of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Amazon announced three nuclear-oriented deals in October with Energy Northwest, X-Energy and Dominion Energy.
A report from grid strategies projects the demand for electricity of American electricity in 2029 by 15.8%, driven by data centers, production and electrification.
The International Energy Agency expects the electricity consumption of data center to increase 130% between 2024 and 2030.
