Google talks to utilities about nuclear power for data centres

A Google Cloud logo outside the Google Cloud data center ahead of its ceremonial opening in Hanau, Germany, on Friday, Oct. 6, 2023. Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.'s Google and ChatGPT maker OpenAI use cloud computing that relies on thousands of chips inside servers in massive data centers across the globe to train AI algorithms called models, analyzing data to help them learn to perform tasks. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

Google is working with utilities in the US and other countries to assess nuclear power as a possible energy source for its data centres, underscoring surging interest in using atomic energy to feed the artificial intelligence boom.

“In the US, in highly regulated markets where we don’t have the opportunity to directly purchase power, we are working with our utility partners and the generators to come together to figure out how we can bring these new technologies — nuclear may be one of them — to the grid,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data centre energy at Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

She didn’t rule out the possibility of using nuclear energy in countries like Japan.

Other tech titans including Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. are already betting on nuclear energy as a source of stable, low-carbon power to meet skyrocketing electricity demand from their data centres, while also reducing dependence on fossil fuels to slash emissions.

Microsoft has agreed to purchase power from the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, while Amazon recently bought a nuclear-powered data centre in the same US state.

Read More: Google, Microsoft, Amazon turn to nuclear, geothermal energy to power operations

For Google, having round-the-clock energy that isn’t intermittent is “critically important as we think about long-term growth,” Corio said.