(Bloomberg) — Google is working with utilities within the US and different international locations to evaluate nuclear energy as a doable vitality supply for its knowledge facilities, underscoring surging curiosity in utilizing atomic vitality to feed the synthetic intelligence increase.
“Within the US, in extremely regulated markets the place we don’t have the chance to instantly buy energy, we’re working with our utility companions and the turbines to return collectively to determine how we are able to carry these new applied sciences – nuclear could also be one in every of them – to the grid,” mentioned Amanda Peterson Corio, international head of information heart vitality at Alphabet’s Google.
She didn’t rule out the opportunity of utilizing nuclear vitality in international locations like Japan.
Different tech titans together with Microsoft Company and Amazon are already betting on nuclear vitality as a supply of steady, low-carbon energy to satisfy skyrocketing electrical energy demand from their knowledge facilities, whereas additionally lowering dependence on fossil fuels to slash emissions.
Microsoft has agreed to buy energy from Pennsylvania’s shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant, whereas Amazon just lately purchased a nuclear-powered knowledge heart in the identical US state.
For Google, having round the clock vitality that isn’t intermittent is “critically essential as we take into consideration long-term development,” Corio mentioned.
