Google announced that it will be reviving a nuclear power plant in the US state of Iowa. The power plant is said to have been idle for the past five years.
Google will be partnering with US company NextEra Energy to bring the nuclear power plant back to life, which will then be used to provide the Alphabet subsidiary with an additional 615 megawatts (MW) of power to help further its growing AI ambitions.
“The cornerstone of this collaboration is the planned restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Center (Duane Arnold), Iowa’s only nuclear facility, which is located in Palo, near Cedar Rapids. Once operational, Google will purchase power from the 615-MW plant as a 24/7 carbon-free energy source to help power Google’s growing cloud and AI infrastructure in Iowa, while also strengthening local grid reliability, creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs, and driving significant economic investment to the Midwest region.”
“Restarting Duane Arnold marks an important milestone for NextEra Energy,” John Ketchum, chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy, said. “Our partnership with Google not only brings nuclear energy back to Iowa — it also accelerates the development of next-generation nuclear technology.
Google may not be the first big tech company to consider the nuclear option to power its AI ambition, but it certainly has become one of the first companies to take that step forward. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was considering it last year, but no progress has seemingly been made since then.
(Source: Techspot)
