Google has reached an agreement with energy company Kairos Power to build a small modular nuclear reactor to supply power to their data centres across two US states.
Starting in 2030, government-owned utility the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is set to purchase up to 50 megawatts of power from Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 reactor located in the state of Tennessee.
In addition to Tennessee, the reactor is due to also help power Google’s data centres in the state of Alabama. The companies stated TVA is the first US utility to sign a purchase power agreement to buy electricity from an advanced nuclear reactor.
Hermes 2 is also the first deployment under an agreement Google and Kairos Power inked in 2024 to launch the start-up’s nuclear technology at a commercial scale to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online by 2035 to support the tech giant’s load growth.
Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s Global Head of Data Centre Energy, said the partnership would “accelerate the deployment of innovative nuclear technologies and help support the needs of our growing digital economy while also bringing firm carbon-free energy to the electricity system”.
She noted lessons from the development and operation of the Hermes 2 plant would “help drive down the cost of future reactors, improving the economics of clean firm power generation in the TVA region and beyond”.
The increasing use of generative AI is putting a strain on the US electrical grid as companies including Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and xAI require massive amounts of power to train their models.
Last month, Google reached agreements with two US electricity companies to reduce its AI data centre energy consumption during spikes in demand on the grid.
Source: Mobile World Live
Image Credit: Stock Image
