Google is working with utilities in the US and other countries to assess nuclear power as a possible energy source for its data centres, underscoring surging interest in using atomic energy to feed the artificial intelligence boom.
“In the US, in highly regulated markets where we don’t have the opportunity to directly purchase power, we are working with our utility partners and the generators to come together to figure out how we can bring these new technologies — nuclear may be one of them — to the grid,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data centre energy at Alphabet’s Google.
She didn’t rule out the possibility of using nuclear energy in countries like Japan.
Other tech titans including Microsoft and Amazon.com are already betting on nuclear energy as a source of stable, low-carbon power to meet skyrocketing electricity demand from their data centers, while also reducing dependence on fossil fuels to slash emissions.
Microsoft has agreed to purchase power from the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, while Amazon recently bought a nuclear-powered data center in the same US state.
For Google, having round-the-clock energy that isn’t intermittent is “critically important as we think about long-term growth”, Corio said.
