new york
CNN
—
Sam Altman is the chairman of a company that promises a bright future for humanity.
No, not OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company he co-founded and currently serves as CEO.
It’s a company called Oklo, and it’s developing the kind of nuclear power technology that many technology leaders, including Altman himself, say will be needed to fuel future advances in artificial intelligence.
The proliferation of power-hungry data centers in our digital lives, and the proliferation of AI technologies that tech giants claim are the future, means energy demand could soon outstrip supply. And that will be a problem for technology companies, which are using AI technology to transform nearly everything about the way we live and work.
But while technology industry leaders point out that nuclear power is essential to a climate-friendly future, some industry experts believe their investments will not only protect their companies’ ability to operate; Some are wondering how much of a benefit it will actually bring to the wider population.
“I think the tech companies are pursuing their own interests,” said Sharon Scassoni, a research professor at George Washington University who studies nuclear energy. “Will nuclear vendors be able to sell additional nuclear power plants to the public? Whether or not that’s the case is another matter,” he said. And policy.
It is clear that more energy needs to come from somewhere. Electricity demand from US data centers has increased by 50% since 2020 and now accounts for 4% of the country’s energy consumption. UBS analysts said in a research note earlier this month that this number could rise to 9% by 2030. Additionally, overall U.S. electricity demand is expected to increase by 13% to 15% annually through 2030, potentially turning electricity into a “much more scarce resource,” according to analysts at JPMorgan.
Data center power demands also threaten to upend tech giants’ sustainability pledges.
The tech giant points to the reliability benefits of nuclear energy compared to other renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. In September, Microsoft signed a deal to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where a partial meltdown occurred in 1979, and plans to revive another reactor by 2028 to advance its AI ambitions. We aim to do so. Amazon and Meta have also begun efforts to lock in deals to secure future nuclear power for their data centers.
“Data centers operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and require a stable power supply. They cannot be shut down just because the wind isn’t blowing or the sun is setting,” says Georgia, who studies nuclear engineering. Professor Anna Eriksson from the University of Technology said.
Oklo is not Altman’s only nuclear energy investment. OpenAI’s CEO is also an investor in Helion Energy, a nuclear startup that uses a different kind of technology than Oklo. Mithril, the venture capital firm of Facebook co-founder and current Asana CEO Dustin Moskowitz, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, also works with Helion Energy. are investing in.
And Mr. Altman is not the only technology leader looking to profit from the push toward nuclear development.
Separately, TerraPower, backed and chaired by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is in the early stages of building a new nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Google participated in a $250 million funding round for nuclear startup TAE Technologies in 2022, and Amazon anchored a $500 million funding round for nuclear startup X Energy in October. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also an investor in Canadian nuclear startup General Fusion.
As of August, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Mithril owned 5.3% of Oklo’s shares, and the billionaire tech investor reportedly backed other nuclear startups. . Tech investor Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest also invested in Oklo earlier this year. (Chris Wright, CEO of hydraulic fracturing company Liberty Energy, who was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of energy, also serves on Oklo’s board.)
Already, members of Congress have come forward to support the expansion of nuclear power. President Joe Biden signed the Advance Act in July, a bill with bipartisan support that aims to make permitting and building new nuclear reactors easier, cheaper and faster. And at this year’s COP28 climate talks, the United States joined more than 20 other countries in pledging to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
Some experts see the tech industry’s investment as critical to promoting expensive but clean energy sources to help combat climate change.
“Let’s be honest, the people doing AI now have money, right?” Erickson said.
“When you look at the interest in nuclear power by technology companies, what we’re seeing is the need for clean baseload power,” Megan Wilson, chief strategy officer at General Fusion, told CNN. This is an expression of widespread recognition.” It is reliable and affordable, with no emissions of both carbon dioxide and methane. ”
General Fusion is still in the process of proving its technology works, but because fusion combines atoms rather than separating them, it’s “very difficult to get started and very easy, so it’s better than fission.” is expected to be an even safer option,” Wilson added. To stop. ”
In the future, the company expects the radiation profile of its power plants to be “very similar to a hospital that uses medical isotopes or has a cancer treatment ward,” Wilson said. .
But some experts are concerned about large investments in nuclear power by industry leaders known for resisting regulations that could slow the progress of nuclear power, even if the aim is to improve safety. It has been stated.
“The problem here is that the big companies in Silicon Valley have the influence and power to get a lot of what they want…and the attitude of the industry is first and foremost to impede their plans. Fight all regulations,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“I’m very concerned that the safety and security regulations that are really essential to protecting the public could be hit hard,” Lyman said.
Oklo and TerraPower did not respond to requests for comment.
Founded in 2013 by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates, Oklo says it develops advanced nuclear reactors to “produce globally abundant and affordable clean energy.” The company’s name comes from the Oklo region in Gabon, Africa, where scientists say Earth’s only natural nuclear reactor existed some 2 billion years ago.
Oklo is building so-called “fast reactors,” which it says can produce more power with less fuel, meaning they are smaller and cheaper, and can recycle spent nuclear fuel from other plants. The company plans to sell the power from these small reactors to customers such as data center operators, in some cases directly on-site.
AI is expected to transform all the technologies we use in the coming decades, and “we want something reliable, scalable and clean, and (nuclear) fission is a great fit for that.” ,” said Jacob DeWitt, CEO and co-founder of Oklo. In May.
Oklo’s stock price has doubled since it went public in May following its merger with Altman’s special purpose acquisition vehicle, AltSea Acquisition Corporation. Its strong stock performance comes as growth in AI is expected to boost demand for nuclear power, even though Oklo is not yet profitable. Any money.
But Oklo says it is making progress toward that vision. The company received approval in September to begin on-site inspections of one of its small nuclear reactors in Idaho and says it has reached multiple agreements to sell future power to data center operators.
But so far, these small modular reactors are “all theoretical,” Squassoni said, and there is a long and expensive road ahead before they can actually produce and sell power. It is said that there is.
Other recent U.S. reactor construction efforts have also been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The U.S. also faces hurdles in obtaining enough fuel to power new reactors, as restrictions on enriched uranium imports from Russia began in the wake of the Ukraine war. The U.S. government is combing through its nuclear stockpile to find enough fuel for several projects while fuel enrichment efforts get underway.
Gates’ TerraPower aims to break ground on a nuclear “demonstration” plant in June and aims to have it up and running by 2030. For now, construction at the Kemmerer, Wyoming, facility is limited to non-nuclear elements, pending full regulations. Approved.
TerraPower says its design is smaller and simpler than traditional nuclear reactors, and its system uses sodium for cooling rather than traditional water-cooled reactors. The Wyoming power plant is being built near a decommissioned coal-fired power plant and will provide power to PacifiCorp, a power company that has relied on coal-fired power plants.
Similar to the Oklo design, TerraPower’s reactor will incorporate “passive” safety mechanisms, the company said. This means it is designed to automatically cool down if something goes wrong, helping to avoid the types of catastrophes associated with the industry, such as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Masu.
Gates said he founded TerraPower and invested more than $1 billion in it because he believes expanding nuclear power is essential to combating climate change.
“This is a huge step toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy,” Gates said at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Wyoming plant in June. “The success of projects like this is critical to the future of this country.”
But TerraPower and other nuclear startups still have a long way to go to convince the public that their next-generation designs are not only viable, but safe.
“The industry is looking for less regulation and faster processes, and the Trump administration will definitely try to speed things up and cut some regulations,” Squassoni said.
Gates commented on nuclear safety concerns in an interview with NPR in June, saying the company welcomes regulatory oversight. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the best in the world and will question and challenge us, and, you know, that’s great,” he said.
–CNN’s Alison Morrow and Ella Nilsen contributed to this report.
