US Secretary of Energy emphasizes nuclear option for climate action

said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Newsweek that her division is helping large technology companies and utilities bring more nuclear power into the national power grid to meet rapidly growing energy demands for data centers.

“This is definitely one piece of the clean energy solution that data centers should be looking at,” Granholm said in an interview Thursday during New York Climate Week.

The AI ​​boom has resulted in a massive expansion of larger and more powerful data centers that consume vast amounts of electricity. This growth poses a challenge for both big tech and energy suppliers as they look to meet new demand while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from data operations and power generation plants.

Despite the ambitious climate goals of many big tech companies, emissions from Google and Microsoft are rising due to the development of artificial intelligence.

Granholm cited a recent forecast from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation showing a 15 percent increase in demand on the national electric grid from data centers alone. However, Granholm said that energy demand from the technology sector also creates an opportunity to stimulate the development of more low-carbon energy sources, including nuclear.

“We don’t really see the rise of AI and data centers as a challenge or an anomaly, but rather as an opportunity,” she said. “This is really an opportunity to revitalize the community with data centers.”

Granholm said the Inflation Reduction Act includes incentives to reuse land that was once used to produce fossil fuels, such as coal-fired power plants and closed coal mines. Data center developers find these old heavy industrial facilities attractive because they have the necessary electricity transmission infrastructure.

Similarly, she said, some nuclear power facilities that were closed for economic reasons are getting a new look.

“Existing nuclear power plants – potentially 60 gigawatts – we think is a real opportunity for the community and an opportunity for better grid management,” Granholm said.

Renewable energy sources are growing dramatically, but the intermittent supply of wind and solar power does not always correspond to periods of high demand for electricity, presenting a challenge for grid managers. The advantage of nuclear power is that it provides a reliable baseload of energy, she added.

Granholm said the DOE is developing new nuclear technology while refurbishing older facilities. Nuclear power plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania that were shut down years ago may come back online in the coming years, in part because of the way demand for data centers is changing the economics of electricity. Granholm said the DOE is working to restart idled reactors.

“We have a gold standard nuclear regulatory regime in this country and we know we can do it safely,” Granholm said.

Climate Week panel on artificial intelligence and energy

The twin issues of artificial intelligence and nuclear power have been recurring topics this week at meetings and announcements during New York Climate Week, including the event Newsweek took place on Wednesday evening.

The Kia-sponsored panel discussion, “AI: Climate Hero or Climate Villain?”, featured experts from big tech, the energy industry, philanthropy and academia, who explored the promise of AI to help solve energy problems and the challenges of powering centers data.

Microsoft’s vice president of energy, Bobby Hollis, told the audience about last week’s announcement that his company would purchase more than 800 megawatts of nuclear power from the utility Constellation. The agreement will allow Constellation to restart a shuttered reactor at perhaps the nation’s most notorious nuclear facility, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

“We hope there will be a nuclear rebirth,” Hollis told the audience at Newsweekcompany headquarters in New York.

“Artificial intelligence has accelerated and increased the demand for carbon-free energy, so it requires us to think outside the box,” Hollis said.

In 1979, the most serious accident in the history of American nuclear energy occurred at Three Mile Island, when the Unit 2 reactor partially melted. The facility’s second reactor remained intact and operated until its closure in 2019.

Heather Quinley, managing director of ESG and sustainability at Duke Energy, said her company, which serves 8.4 million customers in the Southeast and Midwest, is looking to new nuclear power as part of its path to cleaner electricity.

She said energy demand is growing rapidly in the region Duke serves.

“We’re seeing significant growth in data center and advanced manufacturing workloads,” Quinley told the crowd, adding that data centers will account for 25 percent of the new projects Duke will support.

Duke entered into an “Accelerating Clean Energy” memorandum of understanding this year with Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Nucor, a steel company, to develop clean nuclear and renewable energy for on-site generation for large energy consumers.

Changing approach to nuclear energy

Granholm said Microsoft’s agreement to restart the Three Mile Island reactor is an example of a changing approach to nuclear energy. The 1979 accident increased public concern about health and safety risks, and opposition to nuclear power became a central tenet of environmental activism.

However, the climate crisis has forced us to reconsider the role of nuclear energy in decarbonizing our energy supply and reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

“If you look at public opinion polls, there seems to be greater acceptance of nuclear energy today than in the past, which I’m very happy about,” Granholm said.

The coming generation of new, smaller nuclear reactors will provide more flexibility in how and where the units are used, she said, and DOE national laboratories are conducting research on an entirely different type of nuclear energy, nuclear fusion.

Unlike fission – the splitting of uranium or plutonium atoms to release energy – fusion occurs when two atoms collide with each other to form a heavier one. Fusion reactions hold the promise of massive clean energy production, but they require high pressure and temperature to fuse the nuclei.

DOE scientists made breakthroughs in fusion in the laboratory in 2021 and 2022, and Granholm said fusion power could become a reality sooner than many expected. She said President Joe Biden has set a “decadal vision” for the first commercial fusion power plant.

“There are several companies that really count on large investment support from the private sector,” she added. – So it could happen even sooner.

Granholm said that given progress in nuclear power and the rapid development of renewable energy sources, she was optimistic about the country’s ability to produce energy while meeting climate goals.

“We will add 60 gigawatts of clean energy to the grid this year,” Granholm said. “So we will be able to meet that demand.”