Google has announced the site of its first nuclear reactor as part of its 2024 deal with startup Kairos Power. The plant, titled Hermes 2, will be located in Oakridge, Tennessee, and it will supply Google with 50 megawatts (MW) of power under a long-term purchase agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
This plant is the first in a 500-megawatt deal which involves multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) providing power to the tech giant’s data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama. Hermes 2 is scheduled to begin operations in 2030.
“Nuclear is the bedrock of the future of energy security. Google stepping in and helping shoulder the burden of the cost and risk for first-of-a-kind nuclear projects not only helps Google get to those solutions, but it keeps us from having to burden our customers with development of that technology,” TVA CEO Don Moul said in a statement. The deal is expected to reach its full 50 MW potential in 2035. The financial details of the deal have not been revealed.
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The United States had practically stopped building nuclear plants due to the huge cost overruns and delays that are common in the industry. The last two reactors built in the U.S. at Plant Vogtle in Georgia cost $18 billion more than expected and started operations seven years behind schedule in 2023 and 2024. Startups like Kairos believe their plants will be faster and more affordable to build than large reactors like those at Vogtle, bringing in a new era of nuclear construction.
Meanwhile, tech companies are investing in nuclear energy since they are looking for reliable, carbon-free power to meet the demand from artificial intelligence while adhering to their environmental goals. Google has placed orders with Kairos for reactors totaling 500 megawatts of power that are targeted to come online through 2035.
“We specifically want to help commercialize,” Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of data center energy, told CNBC. “We want to see how we can take this from something small to something bigger that we can deploy at scale. That’s really what the Hermes 2 project is doing.”
Kairos CEO Mike Laufer said that one of the company’s goals with Hermes 2 is to create a standardized reactor design which will help cut the cost of future deployments. He also said that Kairos will also develop the supply and manufacturing infrastructure needed to launch at scale through the construction of Hermes 2.
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Last month, Google announced a partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a private company spun from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The tech giant would buy 200 megawatts of clean fusion power from what CFS describes as the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant, known as ARC, based in Chesterfield County, Virginia. ARC is expected to generate 400 megawatts of clean, zero-carbon power in the early 2030s, which is enough energy to power large industrial sites or roughly 150,000 homes, according to CFS.
Meanwhile, rival Meta had signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear plant operator in the U.S., in order to power its energy-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. According to the deal, Meta would buy all power produced in Constellation’s plant in Clinton, Illinois, for a 20-year period beginning 2027.