Google goes nuclear in world-first small reactor agreement
Michael Franco

In what it calls "the world's first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors," Google has taken another step toward its goal of achieving net-zero emissions from its operational chain by 2030.

In terms of developing cleaner, carbon-free energy, Google is certainly putting its money where its mouth is. Just last year the company switched on an advanced geothermal plant in Nevada that has already made impressive gains in developing its technology for using heat from beneath the Earth's surface to generate power.

Now, the tech giant has signed an agreement with Kairos Power, a company that specializes in developing small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. As their name implies, these modular units are much smaller than traditional nuclear reactors and they're meant to be used in conjunction with one another, so they can be scaled to produce exactly the amount of power needed by a facility or a commercial power grid.

In 2023, Kairos got approval from the US Regulatory Commission to build its Hermes demonstration reactor, and earlier this year the company broke ground on the project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The new Kairos/Google agreement will see the deployment of multiple fleets of Kairos' SMRs to areas where Google operates data centers, with the goal of bringing 500 MW of nuclear energy online by 2035. The first deployment of the SMRs is slated for 2030.

“Having an agreement for multiple deployments is important to accelerate the commercialization of advanced nuclear energy by demonstrating the technical and market viability of a solution critical to decarbonizing power grids while delivering much-needed energy generation and capacity,” said Jeff Olson, Kairos Power Vice President, Business Development & Finance.

“This early commitment from Google provides a strong customer demand signal, which reinforces Kairos Power’s continued investment in our iterative development approach and commercial production scale-up.”

In a blog post about the agreement, Google points out that the US Department of Energy saysthat nuclear power has "the highest economic impact of any power generation source," and that the agency estimates that bringing 200 GW of new nuclear power online by 2050 will create 375,000 jobs. Google also says that new sources of electricity are going to be needed in the coming years to help power advancing AI technologies.

Safety first

Mention "nuclear reactor" and safety most typically comes to mind. While disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima burn bright in our collective memories, the fact is that modern modular nuclear reactors, known as Generation IV reactors, are much safer than the monster-sized plants deployed in the past.

Kairos produces SMRs that make use of fuel pellets known as tri-structural isotropic – or TRISO – particles. 

These poppy-seed-sized particles consist of a core of uranium, oxygen, and carbon encapsulated in three layers of carbon- and ceramic-based materials. The shells ensure that radioactive particles from the fission process are contained. For the Kairos reactors, the TRISO particles are formed into larger "pebbles" which are about the size of a billiard ball. These pebbles can be fed into the reactors while they are operating.

The second major safety feature of the Kairos reactors is that they are cooled by molten salts instead of water. These salts can remain stable in extremely high temperatures. This means that if the plant shuts down due to an emergency, the salts will cool the reactor down naturally because they won't boil away, thus reducing the risk of overheating.

Piece of the puzzle

For its part, Google sees SMRs as just one component of a clean-energy strategy that also includes wind, solar and geothermal. Unlike wind and solar solutions though, SMRs offer the opportunity to produce carbon-free power around the clock regardless of what the weather or degree of sunlight might be at any given location at any given time.

You can find out a little more about the project in the following promotional video from Google.

Sources: Google, Kairos Power

 

Michael Franco has been writing about the serious and silly sides of science and technology for years for publications including Discovery Channel Magazine, Discover Magazine and CNET. By far his favorite home so far is at New Atlas where he's allowed all the beakers and Bunsen burners he needs in which to mix his words. The mountains of North Carolina, where he now lives with his wife and two giant poodles, offer the perfect foil to way too much screen time.

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