Oracle wants to build larger data centres with nuclear power

Not going ballistic. Just nuclear. Oracle secures permits for 3 nuclear reactors to power 1GW data centre.

Oracle has secured building permits for a trio of small modular reactors (SMR), co-founder Larry Ellison revealed in an earnings call earlier this week.

What's an SMR?

The report was picked up by The Register, which noted Oracle plans to use them to power a data centre with over 1GW of AI compute.

But what's an SMR?

• Miniaturised nuclear reactors.
• Similar to those used on military vessels.
• Less complex than conventional nuclear power plants.

Each SMR can produce 10 to 100s of MWs of power.

PS: It's a lot smaller than the one in the photo; but that's just to get your attention.

Not so fast, Larry

Oracle currently has 162 cloud data centres, says Larry. Its largest data centre is 800MW and "will contain acres of Nvidia GPU clusters" to train AI models.

And Oracle will soon begin constructing data centres that are more than a gigawatt. That's where the SMR comes in.

But while SMRs are designed to be mass produced, The Register noted that no SMR is currently operating, and pilot projects have not gone well.

Is the tech giant "longing" for nuclear power or actually deploying it? Oracle didn't give any dates about when its GW-class data centre and SMRs powering it will go live.

Sustainable energy?

Yesterday, I wrote about Johor's massive data centres and how data centre operators are requesting renewable energy.

However, I pointed out how solar energy isn't a viable long-term option for data centres unless it's paired with robust battery energy storage systems (BESS).

The post saw a flurry of comments I didn't expect, with many insightful and interesting suggestions about BESS and energy storage solutions in general.

Do check it out if you have a few minutes.

(Read "What's the best way forward for Johor?": https://lnkd.in/gMgzGFrz)

For now: Is nuclear energy a viable energy source for powering the grid in Southeast Asia?