Thought Leadership
After Microsoft, Google is also turning to nuclear power to operate data centers in times of power-hungry artificial intelligence. From 2030, the internet company wants to purchase energy from innovative small reactors from the developer Kairos Power. The annual output should reach 500 megawatts by 2035.
Six or seven power plants are involved, Google manager Michael Terrell told the Financial Times. It is still unclear whether electricity from the reactors will be fed into the grid or whether they will be connected directly to the data centers. Financial details of the deal also remain unclear – as well as whether Google will co-finance the construction of the power plants or only purchase electricity after completion.
A special feature of the compact modular reactors from Kairos is that they are not cooled with water, but with molten fluoride salts. The company emphasizes that its design is safer than conventional reactors simply because the cooling liquid does not boil away. Last year, Kairos received approval to build its first test reactor in the US state of Tennessee.
Climate promises collide with power-hungry AI
The big tech companies have committed to climate-neutral business practices and have increasingly turned to renewable energies in recent years. But then came the AI boom. Training and operating software with artificial intelligence requires a lot of activity in data centers – and that also entails high electricity consumption.
Google aims to be climate-neutral by 2030. To achieve such targets, CO2 emissions are offset by countermeasures such as planting trees. Last year, the proportion of CO2-free energy consumed by Google’s data centers and offices was 64 percent. Meanwhile, the company’s CO2 emissions rose by 13 percent within a year. The energy consumption of the data centers played a central role in this. Google is trying to take on a pioneering role in the use of AI with the tailwind of its search engine dominance.
A reactor block just for Microsoft
A reactor at the decommissioned US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island is to be restarted for Microsoft in the coming years. The software giant has agreed to purchase the energy produced for 20 years. The reactor has an annual output of over 800 megawatts.
Microsoft has also set itself ambitious climate targets. At the beginning of 2020, the Windows company announced that it would more than offset its CO2 emissions by 2030. By 2050, Microsoft even promised to eliminate all of the company’s carbon dioxide emissions since it was founded. In recent years, Microsoft has allied itself with the ChatGPT inventor OpenAI and is integrating the technology behind the chatbot into practically all of its products.
dpa
