SAN FRANCISCO: Silicon Valley is putting big money into nuclear energy projects to power ambitious plans surrounding artificial intelligence, pitching the sustainable power source as crucial to its green transition.
Some of the technology world’s biggest players, like Facebook’s parent company Meta, are eyeing such cleaner energy options to run their power-intensive data centres.
Many have their sights set on small modular reactors (SMRs), which are advanced nuclear reactors with a power capacity of about a third of the generating capacity of traditional nuclear power reactors.
They are a fraction of the size of conventional nuclear reactors and can be assembled at a factory and transported elsewhere for installation.
Some experts said these SMRs are also up to 8 per cent more efficient than traditional reactors.
“That efficiency gain … is exactly what the world needs to meet sustainability goals and also realise a net zero trajectory,” said David Brown, director of the Energy Transition Practice at global analytics provider Wood Mackenzie.
“That’s an important shift for the sector that we believe features very prominently in discussions with governments and potential offtakers.”
A CARBON-FREE ALTERNATIVE
Power demand from data centres, fuelled by AI computing, is set to make up about 8 per cent of global power demand by 2050, according to experts.
That will make phasing out fossil fuel power plants even tougher, especially given that data centres require constant stable power.
Many believe nuclear energy can help bridge that gap as it is a cleaner, carbon-free alternative.
