(Bloomberg) — Google is working with utilities within the US and different international locations to evaluate nuclear energy as a attainable vitality supply for its knowledge facilities, underscoring surging curiosity in utilizing atomic vitality to feed the substitute intelligence growth.
“Within the US, in extremely regulated markets the place we don’t have the chance to straight buy energy, we’re working with our utility companions and the mills to return collectively to determine how we will deliver these new applied sciences – nuclear could also be one in all them – to the grid,” mentioned Amanda Peterson Corio, world head of information heart vitality at Alphabet’s Google.
She didn’t rule out the potential for 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 fulfill 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 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 necessary as we take into consideration long-term progress,” Corio mentioned.
