TerraPower, a nuclear energy startup founded by Bill Gates, reached an agreement this week with one of the largest U.S. data center developers to deploy advanced nuclear reactors. TerraPower and Sabey Data Centers (SDC) are working together on a plan to power existing and future facilities with nuclear power from small reactors.
tech companies are struggling to determine where to get all the electricity they will need for the energy-intensive ai data centers that are putting increasing pressure on power grids. They are increasingly turning to nuclear power, including next-generation reactors being developed by startups like TerraPower.
“The energy sector is transforming at an unprecedented pace.”
“The energy sector is transforming at an unprecedented pace after decades of business as usual, and meaningful progress will require strategic collaboration across industries,” TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque said in a statement. press.
A memorandum of understanding signed by the two companies establishes a “strategic collaboration” that will initially look at the potential for new nuclear power plants in Texas and the Rocky Mountain region that would power SDC data centers.
There is still a long way to go before this can become a reality. The technology that TerraPower and other similar nuclear energy companies are developing still have to overcome regulatory hurdles and demonstrate that they can be commercially viable.
Compared to older, larger nuclear power plants, the next generation of reactors are supposed to be smaller and easier to locate. Nuclear energy is considered an alternative to fossil fuels that are causing climate change. But it still faces opposition from some advocates concerned about the impact of uranium mining and storing radioactive waste near communities.
“I firmly believe that nuclear energy can help us solve the climate problem, which is very, very important. There are designs that, in terms of safety or fuel use or how they handle waste, I think minimize those problems,” Gates said. The edge last year.
TerraPower's reactor design for this collaboration, Natrium, is the only advanced technology of its kind with a construction permit application for a commercial reactor pending before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the company. the company simply broke the earth on a demonstration project in Wyoming last year and expects it to come online in 2030.
Microsoft reached a deal in September to help restart a retired reactor on Three Mile Island. Meanwhile, both Google and amazon announced plans last year to support the development of advanced reactors to power their data centers.
