Google to power AI with ‘golf ball’ nuclear reactors in world first

Google has signed the world’s first deal to power its artificial intelligence using miniature nuclear reactors.

The tech giant made the agreement with California-based startup Kairos Power, with the hope of bringing the clean energy technology online by 2030.

“The next generation of advanced nuclear reactors offers a new pathway to accelerate nuclear deployment thanks to their simplified design and robust, inherent safety,” Google wrote in a blog post announcing the agreement.

“The smaller size and modular design can reduce construction timelines, allow deployment in more places, and make the final project delivery more predictable.

Kairos Power’s technology works by using a ceramic, golf-ball-sized fuel, together with a molten-salt cooling system in order to generate power from a steam turbine.

The firm claims that each of its pebbles is capable of generating the same amount of energy as four tons of coal, but with zero carbon emissions.

Google has committed to producing all of its electricity from clean energy sources by tk, with the majority of its electricity consumption coming from massive data centres located around the world.

The power use of US data centres is expected to triple between now and 2030 as firms increasingly rely on energy-intensive AI systems.

Kairos Power plans to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, however the 500 megawatt deal with Google is only a small fraction of the estimated 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity required by the end of the decade.

Both Google and Kairos Power claim that having an agreement in place before the technology is commercially available will help accelerate its development and scale clean energy technology.

“Having an agreement for multiple deployments is important to accelerate the commercialization of advanced nuclear energy by demonstrating the technical and market viability of a solution critical to decarbonizing power grids while delivering much-needed energy generation and capacity,” said Jeff Olson, Kairos Power’s vice president of business development and finance.

“This early commitment from Google provides a strong customer demand signal, which reinforces Kairos Power’s continued investment in our iterative development approach and commercial production scale-up.”