Google is building three new nuclear power plants for its ultimate desire AI
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence eats kilowatt-hours at breakfast.
Only one AI-generated image consumes the energy needed to charge your smartphone. Large-scale energy demand is adding up seriously. According to reports, with massive midwifery in North America, data center power usage has risen from 2,688 MW in 2022 to 2023, as energy technology is longed for. MIT News.
This helps eject data centers to the 11th largest electric consumer on the planet, just after France’s energy demand. With current energy consumption speed, by 2026, data centers powered by AI are expected to become the fifth largest energy consumer.
With that in mind, it may not be surprising that Google is not only going to build one, but also three new nuclear power plants to drive its AI data center.
Nuclear developer Elementl Power has just announced an agreement with Google to establish three projects for “advanced nuclear power”.
“Our collaboration with Elementl Power has enhanced our ability to act at the speed we need to meet this moment of AI and U.S. innovation,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, head of Google Data Center Energy.
The announcement did not state where the nuclear website would be located, only Google promised to “develop capital in advance to promote the development of the three projects.” Funding from the technology company will be used to secure licenses, energy transmission rights and employ contractors CNBC.
Once all the details are in place, each project will open a final round of fundraising to get the construction items – something Elementl hasn't actually done yet.
This is not the only nuclear project Google sees. Last year, the company signed an agreement with nuclear energy provider Kairos Power to “deploy advanced nuclear power projects in the United States, totaling 500 [megawatts] By 2035. ”
At the time, Carros said the locations would be located in “a related service area that supplies clean energy to Google’s data centers and deploy for the first time by 2030.”
Of course Google can use this boost. By July 2024, Google's greenhouse gas emissions have increased 48% in five years, due to its crazy adoption of AI. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, Google's water usage grew by 17% due to the expansion of AI products and services [which] resulting in increased workload in data centers and the relevant water footprints required to effectively cool them. ”
Is it a company need Using all the energy is a different problem. While Google will convince us that this is a necessary condition for the development into the AI era, we have hardly seen concrete evidence that burns all of these forces (not to mention money) worth mentioning.
So far, Google's AI has strangled the internet with messy slope images, threatening users who used dead and flooded search engines with an interesting AI assistant. What's worse is that none of this AI adoption is organic.
Google proves its energy spending by silently forcing users of its products to use its proprietary AI Gemini while deliberately making search engines worse – a cycle that reinforces the idea of crowds to include AI in AI while undermining any other option.
Whether Google will follow its nuclear-powered AI data centers remains to be seen.
Google's technology rival Microsoft tear down the data center's contract after a deal to restart the three-mile island nuclear reactor isn't a good sign — but hey, hey, someone has to stir the ramp.
More information about AI data centers: Microsoft CEO exits from expensive new data center after skepticism about AI value
