While tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are investing in nuclear power to fuel their data centres, several other organisations have tapped into nuclear power to meet the energy demands driven by data centre growth.
One such state organisation in the United States (US), Santee Cooper, a South Carolina utility is planning to finish its two reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station to help meet the data centre power demand.
Eight years ago, the state-owned public utility had to shut down its nuclear plant development due to financial challenges, scheduling delays and the bankruptcy of its main contractor – the Westinghouse Electric Company in 2017.
Santee Cooper Nuclear Plant for Data Centre Energy
Now Santee Cooper is capitalising on the data centre power consumption due to increasing AI demand according to the Wall Street Journal.
The South Carolina public power and water provider is getting back on the wagon and hopes to complete building the two abandoned reactors.
To revive the nuclear power station construction, Santee Cooper is looking for partners to help finance and complete the two reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station according to the Wall Street Journal.
The two incompleted reactors at V.C. Summer are the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, similar in design to the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, showcasing advanced safety features.
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AI Data Centre Boom
Owing to the rapid advancement in artificial intelligence (AI), data centres require an exorbitant amount of energy.
Additionally, the increasing complexity of AI models is leading to a surge in the computational power required to train and run these models. This has caused a dramatic increase in the energy consumption of data centres globally.
Last year, in January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that data centres, AI and cryptocurrencies consumed around 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity.
AI is driving a surge in data centre energy use, which already accounted for almost two percent of global electricity demand in 2022.
Just earlier in October 2024, Google announced a deal with Kairos Power to deploy small nuclear reactors and use their energy to power its AI data centres.
Amazon in the same month announced three agreements to support the development of nuclear energy projects. This also includes the construction of new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) – advanced nuclear reactors with smaller footprints.
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