Iconic Oak Ridge, TN, Chosen as Site for Google’s Small Modular Nuclear Reactor
Oak Ridge, location of “Manhattan Project” work, now site of a SMR plant project to power Google. Additionally, Denver International Airport has announced an SMR feasibility study to power its operations.
During President Donald Trump’s administration, support for nuclear energy gained steam, with an emphasis on advanced technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs). Seen as a way to secure U.S. energy independence and bolster domestic innovation, SMRs have received policy backing as part of the administration’s strategy to revitalize the nuclear sector. The administration promoted SMRs as a cost-effective, flexible, and safer alternative to traditional large-scale nuclear plants, positioning them as key to expanding grid capacity.
Specifically, Trump’s “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission“ executive order, issued in May, calls for facilitating increased development of Gen III and Gen IV reactors, SMRs, and sets an energy capacity target for nuclear generation of 400 GW by 2050. SMRs are a particularly attractive energy option because of their scalability and siting flexibility, which aligns perfectly with the administration’s push for practical, market-driven energy solutions.
Their lower upfront costs and modular construction made them easier to construct and fund, compared to more traditional reactors. Moreover, with passive safety systems and the potential to serve regions unable to accommodate larger facilities, SMRs fit into the Trump administration’s priority of strengthening infrastructure, boosting U.S. technological leadership in nuclear power, and reducing reliance on foreign energy sources.
There have been a couple of exciting developments related to SMRs in the wake of this EO. To begin with, Google, in partnership with Kairos Power, has chosen Tennessee as the location for an SMR plant scheduled to start supplying electricity to the tech giant’s southeastern U.S. data centers by 2030.
Big Tech is requiring massive amounts of electricity to scale up technologies like generative artificial intelligence in energy-intensive data centers. Those record energy needs are driving U.S. power consumption to new highs and propelling the development of fresh power sources like next-generation nuclear energy.
The Tennessee reactor is the first to be deployed as part of Google’s corporate agreement, announced last year, to buy nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors.
The deal would support 500 megawatts of advanced nuclear capacity, which is enough to power about 350,000 homes, to be developed by California-based nuclear company Kairos.
The 50-megawatt small modular nuclear power plant will be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, under a long-term power purchase agreement with utility Tennessee Valley Authority (TVC.N), to deliver electricity to Google data centers locally and in the state of Alabama.
This is a fitting step in Trump’s “America First” plan. Oak Ridge was a key site in the atomic bomb effort during World War II. It was chosen for the Manhattan Project and housed massive facilities for uranium enrichment and research.
Additionally, Denver International Airport has announced that it will conduct a feasibility study to determine the viability of building a small modular reactor to power its facility.
The airport said in a statement that it had issued a request for proposals to study the feasibility of building an SMR as part of overall efforts to meet future clean energy demands.
The feasibility study will attempt to answer several critical questions including whether SMRs are a viable solution for the airport to meet its long-term electrical and energy needs and what are the various types of SMR technology. It will also look at a potential cost estimate and potential funding options for an SMR facility, as well as analysing the possible risks and the government regulations needed to build and operate an SMR.
The study will cost up to $1.25m (€1.07m) and is expected to take between six-12 months to complete, at which time the airport, along with its partners, will evaluate the findings and determine next steps.
Denver mayor Mike Johnston said studying the potential of SMRs is a forward-looking step in understanding “how we can deliver reliable, clean energy at scale”.
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Comments
What do they do with the heat the computation generates? That’s a huge resource. It could displace resistive home heating watt for watt, or power electrical generators to power the very computation that generates the heat, up to the limits of thermodynamic free energy.
Oak Ridge is in the South… we run AC for 9 months of the year.
This is nuts.
Jane, stop this crazy thing.
Any concentrated heat is a source of energy. You can cool with it. You’re only limited in how much by the thermodynamic law against perpetual motion machines (you can’t generate enough cold to run the cooling machine but you can generate less).
You can harness the energy of the sun too, but at present time all data centers are cooled by huge power bills.
I was in the epicenter of DC build strategy from 2012 to 2017, the forward looking plan in 2017 was to 1) throttle down CPU in hotter enviros, 2) route traffic to the coolest DC possible with acceptable lag and 3) geothermally cool. That was the working theory at the time when they had just gotten good at the storage container model with all airflow down the back.
They cannot build DCs fast enough at the moment and according to the reg- every ounce of capacity is leased far out into the future.
Right now- the hottest career path IS NOT an AI programmer, but the schedule manager at AECOM and other architectural firms tasked with building the DCs.
Google has had several of these positions open for the Georgia area for a while.
In the 1980s, I met one of my father’s clients who had served as an accountant at the Oak Ridge site. He was later transferred to active duty and assigned to MacArthur’s staff, probably because there was little risk of capture. He said he was assigned two MPs at all times and he suspected that their orders were to ensure that he would not live to fall into enemy hands with what little secret information he knew. That is how closely held the Manhattan Project was.
see the fat electrician’s Waffle House episode to see how the founder of Waffle House played into the Man P.
lefty will send their tesla attackers now to these places
triple the security measures
Plants have very good security. Would be funny to watch the morons try.
Google is the largest and most effective tool for proggie propaganda ever devised.
Heavy compute DC locations are generally situated around 2 things: 1) a good internet trunk, 2) cheap power.
Where there is one, there is 20 others- and they are all there. Drive through Vantage Washington for example. Aside from cooling the other factor is the reliability of the energy source. I don’t know jack about nuke sites, but if the feed is more reliable than hydro or carbon, then the DCs are all in.
The battery back ups are expensive and a hazmat accident waiting to happen, the generator set ups are insane. The only other place they use those DC generator engines are cruise ships.
“Modular” makes it sound as if structures get built at some factory and then shipped and installed at a SMR site. Easy peasy. And then XYZ Energy Company simply plugs things in as needed – because it’s child’s play – just a matter of snapping Legos™ together.
I’m all for building SMR – we do without the slickyboy bull-s sales pitch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAREM#/media/File:CAREM_julio_2019.jpg
Because it is being built on the nuclear reservation, they will be exempt from the Atomic Energy Commission’s interference.
TN is supposed to be building some Nuke power there for the locals too. Damn we need it.
A recent article suggests the challenge for AI is not going to be power, but sourcing water!
My concern would be earthquakes, as Oak Ridge is in a seismic zone.
These are walk away safe designs. It would automatically shutdown, safely.