Claire Corkhill, Malcolm Joyce, Derek Lacey & Nigel Thrift
Undeniably, ambitions for a nuclear renaissance are thriving. The UK is building its first nuclear power station in 30 years, France plans a new fleet of 14 reactors and, in total worldwide, 100 new reactors are proposed. And it is not only energy firms who are leading the way—Big Tech companies, who require reliable low-carbon dioxide baseload electricity to provide for their energy-thirsty AI technologies and data storage, are supporting nuclear energy too. Microsoft’s Constellation Energy has suggested reopening the Three Mile Island power plant (Reuters 2024) in Pennsylvania, and Amazon recently purchased a nuclear-powered data center (Gardner 2024a).
But unlike Microsoft and Amazon, Google has agreed to buy power generated from a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors that are yet to leave the drawing board, by backing the start-up company Kairos Power and their conceptual molten salt reactor (Gardner 2024b). The primary driver for building small modular reactors like these is to avoid the cost over-runs and extended timescales that have plagued large conventional reactor construction, like the Flamanville light water reactor built and operated by Électricité de France, which was 12 years overdue and more than 10 billion euros (about $10.9 billion in US dollars) over budget. Moreover, the advent of Gen IV reactor designs, often termed “advanced modular reactors,” promises not only electricity generation but also hydrogen and heat, as well as medical isotope production.
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