Google today announced it has signed a deal with nuclear power startup Kairos Power to build seven small nuclear reactors to power its data centers. The deal promises to add about 500 megawatts of carbon-free electricity at a time when energy demand for data centers and AI is surging.
Google says the new power plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2010. It's unclear whether the reactor will be connected directly to Google's property (a arrangement known as “behind the meter”) or if it will feed into Google's power grid, which claims carbon-free electricity through its agreement with Kairos. It is.
The deal would see Google join Microsoft and Amazon in turning to nuclear power to meet their power needs. Microsoft announced in September that it would pay Constellation Energy to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, which was shut down in 2019. Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would build a super-large data center and connect it directly to another nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
If Kairos is able to meet the 2030 deadline, that would be a slight revision to recent projections. As of July, Kairos was targeted to begin commercial operations by the “early 2030s,” according to an article published by the U.S. Department of Energy. Even if Kairos can meet its revised goals, it will face competition from fusion startups, many of which aim to have commercial-scale power plants online by 2035.
Kairos is one of a new breed of nuclear startups building so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) with the aim of reducing the cost of building nuclear power plants and speeding up their construction.
Most nuclear power plants are large facilities, delivering more than 1,000 megawatts, but they take years to plan and nearly a decade to build. The U.S.'s newest nuclear fission reactors, Bogle 3 and 4 in Georgia, came online in 2023 and 2024, respectively, overcoming a seven-year drought (the next most recent reactors came online in 2016) ). Still, it was seven years late and $17 billion over budget.
SMR startups are trying to build nuclear power plants faster and cheaper by using mass production techniques to lower costs and speed up construction. Kairos is taking this technology one step further by cooling the reactor with molten salts of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride instead of water. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the company's 35-megawatt demonstration reactor plan, which has been sidestepped by another SMR startup, Oklo.
Despite regulatory buy-in, Kairos still faces major challenges. Commercial small modular reactors are not yet in operation, so the economics are largely unproven. In addition, Kairos' molten salt design leverages decades of industry experience with water-cooled reactors.
But Kairos' biggest challenge may not be technical. According to a Pew Research survey, 56% of Americans say they support nuclear power, but 44% remain opposed. Once a site is selected for a nuclear reactor, the number of objections could increase. The Pew survey simply asked the public whether the United States should expand nuclear power generation in general, rather than in people's backyards. Additionally, while support for nuclear power is nearing recent highs, far more people support wind and solar, two technologies available today and much lower cost than new nuclear power plants. .