Baby Steps before a boom? big Tech treads tentatively in Search of Nuke solution to fuel AI

Could nuclear power’s future in the U.S. be in the hands of Big Tech? Well, just maybe.

After projects with large reactors almost ground to a halt after the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, many thought the industry was doomed to a slow death. But with the new emphasis on green energy — nuclear emits no pollution, though disposal of its waste is controversial — it has come to the fore again as demand for power grows, especially from the tech sector.

In particular, the Big Tech has become concerned about the amount of energy needed to power its data centers, particularly the ones that process the fast-growing artificial intelligence sector.

And thus the arrival of tech titans such as Bill Gates, who recently invested $1 billion in the startup TerraPower, which is developing small modular reactors (SMRs), a more modest cousin of the huge reactors that have been built since the 1950s..

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are relatively new, and TerraPower’s first model will not begin operations until 2030 — if it can get additional funding.

Meanwhile, Amazon recently said it would invest $500 million in SMRs, with analysts saying the fact that their figure is less than Gates’ indicates that the giant online seller is still testing the waters.

Old-style reactors revived
But that’s not all: Microsoft plans to restart one of the reactors at Three Mile Island, which suggests that it does not think investments in SMRs are promising in the short term. A portion of the Three Mile Island investment is from its owner, Constellation Energy.

Google has also said it would invest in nuclear power, but the scale of its financial investment was not clear.

The federal government’s investment is also very small compared to the need, as suggested by a recent Department of Energy announcement. ”As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda,” it said, “the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today opened applications for up to $900 million in funding to support the initial domestic deployment of Generation III+ (Gen III+) small modular reactor (SMR) technologies.”

Hardly a windfall.