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Following news last month aboutplans to restart one of the Three Mile Island reactorsin order to power Microsoft’s AI data centres, Google has revealed its own designs for harnessing nuclear energy.
In a recentblog post, the tech giant explained they’d signed a “world first” deal with nuclear power startupKairos Powerto build a fleet of SMRs (small modular reactors). It’s all in aid of supplying power to Google’s own data centres due to theextremely high power consumption of AI.
The first reactor is planned to go online in 2030, with further deployments planned up until 2035, likely totalling around six or seven reactors in all. While neither party has yet detailed where these new SMRs will be built, the deal promises to ultimately add “up to 500 [megawatts] of new 24/7 carbon-free power to U.S. electricity grids.”
It’s not just the US or China looking towards a future with SMRs; the Czech government has selected Rolls-Royce SMR to build a fleet for them, and the UK is alsoconsidering a similar deal with the same company.
Considering the as-yet-unproven SMRs, plus their emphasis on speedy construction, it’s enough to give anyone even slightly nuclear-cautious sweaty palms.
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Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
Your next upgrade
(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
(Image credit: Future)
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
It’s not hard to see why; besides the fact these two sources of renewable energy tend to be much less costly to harness compared to building a new nuclear power station, there’s also a much shorter list of safety concerns.
The main issue for Google is that, to meet the round-the-clock power demands of a data centre, you’d need to build a huge battery to ensure you had enough wind or solar-flavoured juice on hand. That is to say, there’s definitely still room to innovate in the renewable energy space, so perhaps instead of trying to reinvent the nuclear wheel with Kairos, Google should be trying to grease solar and wind’s.
TOPICSGoogle
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