UPDATED 15:52 EDT / OCTOBER 09 2023

EMERGING TECH

Standard Power details plan for data centers powered by miniaturized nuclear reactors

Standard Power, a New York-based provider of colocation and data center construction services, plans to use miniaturized nuclear reactors to power some of its facilities.

The company detailed the plan on Friday. It intends to source the reactors from NuScale Power Corp., a publicly traded nuclear energy company. NuScale is not the only company developing miniaturized nuclear reactors, but it’s the currently the sole market player to have received regulatory approval for its system design in the U.S.

“We see a lot of legacy baseload grid capacity going offline with a lack of new sustainable baseload generation options on the market especially as power demand for artificial intelligence computing and data centers is growing,” Standard Power Chief Executive Maxim Serezhin said in a statement.

Standard Power will also work with a firm called ENTRA1 on the project. London-headquartered ENTRA1 is NuScale’s “exclusive global” commercialization partner. It has rights to build, operate and own power plants powered by the latter company’s reactors.

“By deploying our innovative NuScale SMR Technology to more consumers around the world, we’re taking an important step toward addressing the world’s enormous decarbonization needs,” said NuScale CEO John Hopkins.

Standard Power plans to build two nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania to power nearby data centers. Between them, the plants are expected to contain 24 NuScale reactors with a combined capacity of 1,848 megawatts. One megawatt is enough to power upwards of hundreds of households.

Spinning a magnet around a piece of conducting material known as an electromagnetic coil produces electricity. Worldwide, most power plants rely on this phenomenon to generate power. In NuScale’s reactors, the kinetic energy needed to spin the magnet around the coil is provided by jets of steam.

A NuScale reactor is a vertically positioned, cylindrical structure that stands 65 feet tall and has a diameter of nine feet. At the bottom of the cylinder is nuclear fuel that produces heat. A network of pipes filled with water is suspended above the fuel.

According to NuScale, the heat produced at the bottom of the reactor vaporizes the water in the pipes above. The resulting steam then starts traveling up the cylinder. After reaching a certain height, the steam spins a magnet around a coil and causes electricity to be produced.

The water eventually cools down and descends in liquid form back to the bottom of the reactor, where it’s once again vaporized. This process is repeated many times to produce a steady supply of electricity.

NuScale says that its systems take up a 100th the space needed for a traditional reactor. Because of their relatively compact size, its reactors can be made at a factory and shipped in a prefabricated form to the location where they will be used. This removes the need for onsite construction, which lower costs.

The company says its reactor design is highly safe. According to the company, its reactors can shut down and cool themselves automatically after most types of failures. They don’t use complex components such as pumps to move the water used for steam production, an approach that NuScale claims lowers the risk of hardware issues.

For added measure, NuScale plans to deploy its reactors in underground, earthquake-resistant pools filled with water. The water is meant to cool the submerged reactor in the event of a malfunction. For added measure, a concrete lid is placed on the pool.

Standard Power and NuScale estimate that the two power plants they’re planning to build will come online in 2029.

Photo: Unsplash

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