U.S. Department of EnergyIn a recent interview with Axios, Jennifer Granholm,Actively exploringnuclear power plantSolutions to alleviate the power demand of AI data centers.
Granholm said that the development of AI in the United States itself is not a problem, and AI can help humans solve many problems.But the key point is that the rapid development of AI has exceeded the carrying capacity of the State Grid., the existing power grid cannot support the rapid expansion of AI data centers.
According to reports, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been in talks with large-scale companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon to consider building nuclear fusion and nuclear fission power plants to meet the needs of expanding AI.
Granholm said he had conducted in-depth discussions with Microsoft about building a nuclear reactor near Microsoft's data center to handle thousands of AI Training / GPU load for inference.
Granholm expressed the hope that through the successful experience of cooperation with Microsoft, nuclear power plant solutions can be further promoted to alleviate the current electricity demand and meet the rapid development of AI data centers.
Nuclear power accounts for only 20% of U.S. electricity, and the Department of Energy is currently providing $1.52 billion in repair and restoration services to the Holtec Palisades 800-MW nuclear power plant.
Microsoft is investing in a small modular reactor (SMRs) microreactor energy strategy that could serve as a model for other large tech companies to follow.