Google, Kairos Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority have signed a nuclear power deal as utilities and technology companies turn to the clean energy source for the artificial intelligence revolution.
Kairos, a small modular reactor company, is building a reactor in Tennessee that will supply 50MW to federal utility TVA, which provides power to Google’s data centres in Alabama and Tennessee.
The companies said that Kairos’s small modular reactors will not initially provide direct electricity to Google’s data centres, but would give Google energy attribution certificates showing that it had added an equivalent amount of clean energy to offset power from dirtier sources like natural gas.
The agreements will make TVA the first US utility to agree to buy electricity from an advanced generation IV reactor, signalling confidence in the potential of the new type of plants. The reactors offer improved fuel efficiency and produce less waste than available nuclear technologies.
Technology companies are increasingly turning to nuclear to meet power demand for their energy-intensive data centres and respond to pressure to reduce carbon emissions from their AI operations.
