As artificial intelligence drives a surge in demand for power-hungry data centers, big players in the field – such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft – are partnering with companies entering or involved in the business of building and running advanced nuclear power plants.
Two companies that have nuclear power projects planned in Oak Ridge – Kairos Power and X-Energy Reactor Co. – announced such partnerships this week.
Enormous amounts of data are needed for training AI models involved in complex tasks such as natural language processing and image recognition. Because data centers will require large amounts of uninterrupted power and because their operators seek to meet carbon-free energy and net-zero carbon-emission goals by the next decade, they consider nuclear power an attractive option to supplement renewable energy sources such as solar and wind technologies.
Kairos Power to supply power for Google data centers
Kairos Power, the California company that plans to build a 35-megawatt salt-cooled test reactor called the Hermes Demonstration Reactor by 2026 in Oak Ridge, has announced a partnership with Google, the search engine and website company, to supply power for Google’s planned data centers.
According to the Kairos Power news release, “the deal represents the first corporate agreement for multiple deployments of a single advanced reactor design in the United States.”
The advanced design to be tested in Oak Ridge incorporates two Oak Ridge National Laboratory innovations: TRISO nuclear fuel and a fluoride salt coolant to carry away the fuel’s heat and potentially make steam to spin a turbine and produce electricity.
The TRISO (tristructural isotropic) fuel that Kairos Power will use will consist of pebbles, each of which will contain thousands of coated uranium fuel particles the size of poppy seeds. The spherical particles, which will withstand high temperatures and prevent the release of their radioactive contents, will be nested inside an advanced manufactured silicon carbide structure covered externally with graphite.
Amazon is investing in X-energy, which is building TRIXO-X
X-Energy Reactor Co. LLC, known as “X-energy,” the company that will build the TRISO-X nuclear fuel fabrication facility in the western part of Oak Ridge, announced it will be receiving a large investment from Amazon, a multinational technology company that sells a wide range of products online, offers cloud computing services and is a leader in digital streaming and artificial intelligence. The investment will help launch the Oak Ridge project.
In December 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its first construction permit for a reactor that uses a substance other than water as the reactor coolant. The salt-cooled Hermes test reactor will generate heat if Kairos Power receives a license from the NRC to operate the reactor.
This year, Kairos Power started excavating the site near where the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant was located in west Oak Ridge. The company has applied for a construction permit for a planned Hermes 2 Demonstration Plant that would house two 35-megawatt reactors that could generate up to 28 megawatts of electricity for the grid.
“Kairos Power and Google have signed a Master Plant Development Agreement, creating a path to deploy a U.S. fleet of advanced nuclear power projects totaling 500 megawatts by 2035,” stated news release released Monday. “Under the agreement, Kairos Power will develop, construct and operate a series of advanced reactor plants and sell energy, ancillary services and environmental attributes to Google under Power Purchase Agreements.
“Plants will be sited in relevant service territories to supply clean electricity to Google data centers, with the first deployment by 2030 to support Google’s 24/7 carbon-free energy and net zero goals. The innovative, multi-plant agreement will support technology development by extending Kairos Power’s iterative demonstration strategy through its first commercial deployments.”
In a news release issued Wednesday, X-energy,” a leader in advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology that is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, announced a financing round of approximately $500 million, anchored by Amazon. According to the release, the investment will help meet growing energy demands by funding the completion of X-energy’s reactor design and licensing as well as the first phase of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, which plans to manufacture and market fuel similar to what Kairos Power will use.
Additionally, the funding will support future carbon-free projects that will use X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) based on a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design similar to concepts pioneered at ORNL. Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corp. (“Ares”), NGP and the University of Michigan have joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund in the financing round.
According to the news release, Amazon and X-Energy are also collaborating to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new power projects online across the United States by 2039, representing the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs to date. The efforts will help meet growing energy demands in key locations through direct project investments and long-term power purchase agreements to help power Amazon operations, including data centers.
“This collaboration between Amazon and X-energy is a significant step toward accelerating advanced nuclear technologies that can help us bring new sources of carbon-free energy to the grid cost-effectively and safely,” said Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of Global Data Centers. “We need smart solutions that can help us meet growing energy demands while also addressing climate change. X-energy’s technology will be integral in helping achieve this goal, and it is an important step in Amazon’s work to achieve our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero by 2040.”
Amazon and X-energy will initially work together to develop a four-unit 320-megawatt project with Energy Northwest in central Washington, with the option to increase that project to 12 units and 960 MW. Amazon is immediately committing a direct investment in the Energy Northwest project to fund early development work that X-energy will perform.
In a related development, Microsoft announced in September that it had signed a power purchase agreement with Constellation, a nuclear power plant company, to make required upgrades for safely restarting the 835-MW Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor in Pennsylvania for potential use in providing power to at least one of Microsoft’s future data centers.
The undamaged reactor sits next to TMI Unit 2, which was shut down in 1979 because of an accidental explosion triggered by a steam reaction with nuclear fuel rod cladding. ORNL researchers were involved in analyzing the damage to the reactor and generated documents for the President’s Commission on the accident.
The accident at TMI Unit 2 heightened public concern about nuclear safety, increased regulatory scrutiny and caused long delays in obtaining permits and financing for new, increasingly costly nuclear projects. TMI Unit 2 is in the process of being decommissioned by its owner, Energy Solutions.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Companies with 2 Oak Ridge nuclear projects partner with Google, Amazon
