Small nuclear reactors won’t be ready in time for the needs of energy-guzzling needs of Artificial Intelligence.

As of last month, when [data centres] were classed as critical national
infrastructure, data centres are on a par with utilities, meaning the
government would step in were there a risk to connectivity. Nonetheless, as
Rohan Kelkar, the executive vice-president of power products at Schneider
Electric, puts it, the “lack of grid capacity puts UK’s AI and data
centre ambitions and energy transition goals at risk”.

So much so that we have seen the boroughs of Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow all rejecting
data centre projects in order to retain supply for housing. This is far
from a UK-specific issue. In Ireland, the pressure on the national grid
from computing needs is so acute they have had to pause some data centre
approvals over concerns that excessive demand from data centres could lead
to blackouts.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Big Tech companies are
also grappling with the energy conundrum: how to find low-carbon, reliable
sources of power for their power-hungry warehouses without jeopardising
customer needs or their net zero goals. Along with renewable energy and
improving battery storage, right now they all seem to be turning in one
direction: towards nuclear power. Microsoft signed a deal last month to
help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data centre earlier in the year. On Monday,
Google became the latest to announce a nuclear energy deal to meet the
needs of its data centres, looking at mini reactors developed by a
Californian company.

A cocktail of technological innovation means this
could happen in the UK, too. Rolls-Royce, the engineer, is at the forefront
of developing mini reactors and is already having conversations with
operators in the UK about their use. While mini nukes would not have been
commercially viable in the past, now that demand for data centres has
jumped exponentially, their potential use has become more feasible. Another
key component in the future marriage of computing and nuclear power is that
data centres are becoming less location driven because of improvements in
latency, the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another.

The immediate problem with the introduction of small nuclear reactors?
Rolls-Royce estimates that they remain a decade or more away, with none
currently operating and generating electricity in the UK. In the meantime,
connection to the “constrained” grid, remains all-important headache
for those looking to build data centres.

Times 16th Oct 2024

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/technology/article/nuclear-powered-data-centres-looking-to-become-cost-effective-qpgskj8xv