It’s no secret that one of the issues seen to be hampering the advancement of artificial intelligence technology is the supply of clean and sufficient power. Because of this, a large number of technology companies are now looking to nuclear power supply for their needs.
Google recently reportedly signed a nuclear power purchase agreement with nuclear power supply company Kairos Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to supply clean electricity to Google’s data centers located in Tennessee and Alabama.
This nuclear power plant, called Hermes 2, will be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and before this power purchase agreement with Google, it was a nuclear power plant developed for the purpose of nuclear energy demonstration and research.
Originally, the Hermes 2 power plant was only supposed to produce 28MW of electricity supply. But with the agreement between Google and TVA, this nuclear power plant will supply 50MW of electricity that will be connected directly to the TVA electricity grid which will then be supplied to the aforementioned Google data centers.
The Hermes 2 nuclear power plant will be operational from 2030, and is expected to increase its power output to as high as 500MW by 2035.