Podcast: The global tech giants choosing nuclear

Microsoft announced in September it had signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation that will see Three Mile Island unit 1 restarted. Three Mile Island is well known for the accident which led to its second unit being shut down in 1979. But unit 1 had no such problem – it entered commercial operation in 1974 and was only closed down in 2019 for economic reasons. With a deal agreed with Microsoft to take all its electricity output, the plan now is to get it back online by 2028 and seek a licence renewal to extend plant operations to at least 2054. Microsoft’s vice president of energy Bobby Hollis called it “a major milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonise the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative”.

Google announced on 15 October it had agreed to purchase energy from Kairos Power under a deal that would support the first commercial deployment of its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature advanced small modular reactors by 2030 and aim for a fleet totalling 500 MW of capacity by 2035. The agreement said the plants would be sited in “relevant service territories to supply clean electricity to Google data centres” and support Google’s 24/7 carbon-free energy and net-zero goals.

Amazon announced on 16 October a series of agreements that will see it taking a stake in advanced nuclear reactor developer X-energy and rolling out its Xe-100 advanced small modular reactor initially at a project in Washington State. For this project Amazon will fund the initial feasibility phase for the SMR project at a site near Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant, with Amazon having the right to purchase the 320 MW of electricity expected to be generated by the first four-module project, with plans to treble that capacity in a second phase.

We hear some of the key messages from Jennifer Granholm, US Energy Secretary, at the Amazon launch, as she talked about the background to the announcements and the potential for more data centre power deals to come.

In terms of assessing the significance of the announcements that are turning into a reality the case for nuclear to power the rapidly increasing energy demands of data centres. All three are global corporations so can further projects elsewhere in the world be expected?  Their example will likely encourage other companies to follow suit as they look to cut carbon emissions while still growing their use of power.

The promise of small modular reactors has been talked about for many years, and there are of course more than 80 designs in development around the world. The challenge is to get the first-of-a-kind financed and built – and two of these three deals will be helping achieve that for X-energy and Kairos Power, and are also helping to kickstart the crucial supply chains and establishing the ‘modular’ construction process.

Also in this episode

 

There is also a report from World Nuclear News’s Claire Maden on what was a very timely session at last month’s World Nuclear Symposium focusing on connecting end users with 24/7 energy. Those who featured on the panel include Todd Noe, Director of Nuclear & Energy Innovation at Microsoft, Claude Lorea, Cement, Innovation and ESG Director for the Global Concrete and Cement Association, Lou Martinez Sancho, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, R&D and Innovation, for Westinghouse and The Nuclear Company’s Juliann Edwards.

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Episode credit:  Presenter Alex Hunt. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production