As the number of data centres being built increases rapidly — raising questions about meeting their growing electricity needs — the nuclear energy industry has spied an opportunity.
Nuclear energy advocates believe that a new generation of advanced reactors could provide a solution to the strain being placed on the grid as traditional data centres are joined by new, power-thirsty artificial intelligence and crypto mining facilities.
“We’ve gone from just wanting them to store data . . . to things that are almost at the most extreme end of computer performance,” says Michael Bluck, head of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College in London.