when artificial intelligence and nuclear energy shake hands

Artificial intelligence has caused carbon emissions from big tech companies to skyrocket. The significant energy costs involved in this technology are moving them all away from their goal of carbon neutrality, a goal they had planned to achieve by 2030. The solutions they have found are strange marriages of convenience, in which The digital industry of the 21st century shakes hands with a technology that has barely advanced since the 20th century, nuclear power.

Everyone signed different terms. Microsoft has reached a deal to reactivate a nuclear power plant that has been offline since 2019 due to a lack of economic profitability. This is the first unit on Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania (United States), the same unit which suffered the worst nuclear accident in the country’s history in 1979. Then its second unit experienced a reactor failure that caused the leak of radioactive gases and iodine, the evacuation of 200,000 people and the beginning of the decline of nuclear power plant construction in the country.

“This agreement is an important step in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid, supporting our commitment to reducing carbon emissions,” said Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, in a press release.

Amazon purchased a large-capacity data center adjacent to another of the United States’ major centers, Susquehanna, also located in Pennsylvania. In this case, it was the company operating the factory that decided to build the digital infrastructure, hoping that the growing energy needs of the tech giants would attract them to this alternative.

He didn’t even have to wait to finish construction: Amazon put 600 million euros on the table and kept it. Once fully operational, the data center will consume 40% of the maximum power Susquehanna can produce.

“To complement our wind and solar energy projects, which rely on weather conditions to produce energy, we are also exploring new innovations and technologies and investing in other sources of clean, carbon-free energy,” explained an Amazon spokesperson told elDiario. The nuclear data center “is a project that goes in this direction,” he assured.

Pocket nuclear: the SMR

There is a third way in addition to resuscitating the factories built in the 70s or taking advantage of the surpluses that the current ones are not capable of investing. These are small modular reactors or SMRs, for their acronym in English. This is an emerging technology that involves assembling and building reactors in factories so they can be transported more easily to where they are needed. For the moment, they have not gone beyond the prototyping phase.

All the tech giants have approached SMRs, but “the world’s first corporate agreement to buy nuclear power from multiple small modular reactors” was signed by Google with a startup trying to develop a model of stable job, Kairos Power. “The initial phase aims to commission Kairos Power’s first SMR quickly and safely by 2030, followed by the deployment of additional reactors until 2035,” Google detailed.

The multinational comes to explain that the end justifies the means. “The grid needs new sources of electricity to support artificial intelligence technologies that drive important scientific advances, improve services to businesses and customers, and drive national competitiveness and economic growth,” he says. This will allow us to “unleash the full potential of artificial intelligence for everyone”.

For specialists, this alliance is not a surprise. The key, they explain, is availability. “Unlike other fossil fuel markets, the uranium market is generally very stable, with very little price fluctuations. Thus, future costs of electricity production can be predicted,” explains Gonzalo Jiménez, professor of nuclear engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

“Another thing that makes them very attractive is that they have very intense energy. With very little physical space, they are able to generate a lot of energy. You can have a small modular reactor very close to your data center with the assurance that, whatever the weather and wind or sunshine conditions, you will have stable energy production,” he adds. .

Spain and Germany, against

For now, Google will only deploy these reactors in the United States. In Spain, the PP and Vox have expressed this type of technology. However, Spain is, with Germany, the country most reluctant to this type of new reactors. “Right now they are the exception throughout Europe,” says Jiménez.

“In most countries, even those that have historically not been interested in this technology, there are initiatives aimed at building this type of reactor in the more or less near future. There are countries which already have more advanced studies, of an industrial type, like France or Poland for example,” adds the professor.

However, neither the optimism nor the “green” vision of nuclear energy is shared by everyone. “Nuclear is declining, not increasing, and no amount of pressure from lobbyists will change that fact. It emits between 9 and 37 times more CO2 than wind power. Even though some repeat it, there is no nuclear solution. It’s magical thinking,” Mark Z. Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program at Stanford University, recently told elDiario.es.

Other specialists point out that many assertions about the commercial potential of these small reactors do not hold up. “There’s a lot of smoke and a lot of propaganda,” says Pedro Fresco, energy expert and author of Energy Fakes.

“They’re hoping that by mass-producing them, they can improve costs. Based on repetition. This line is exactly the opposite of what nuclear engineers have traditionally followed, which is to make them bigger and bigger to make them more efficient. Today, a race for economies of scale has begun,” adds Fresco: “What is the reality? Today, only two countries have a connected SMR, namely Russia and China. Both are prototypes, and in both cases the costs have escalated well beyond what was anticipated.

The specialist points out that the only Western company to have obtained a license to deploy an SMR, NuScale, had to cancel the project because it involved much higher final costs than expected. Other Western companies are not yet licensed and have not installed any reactors, so the true cost of this technology is unknown.

Google has not made public the figures for the contract with Kairos Power, but says that buying several reactors from it before even being able to verify that it is a commercially viable model will facilitate its development. “By purchasing power from multiple reactors, we will help accelerate the repeat deployment of reactors needed to reduce costs and bring Kairos Power technology to market more quickly,” he noted in his announcement.

“Many agreements of intentions have been concluded, but we do not consider them as realities. These are all prototypes, we don’t know the costs. It’s an idea that may seem very good on paper because it generates 24/7, but if they charge you four times more for electricity than solar or wind, what are you going to do? you say? The reality is that we have had enormous expectations regarding the development of nuclear energy for 70 years, but they have never been realized. SMRs are another huge bubble of expectations,” Fresco concludes.