Following a series of announcements from big tech companies investing in nuclear power, one energy executive says it is the first time the nuclear power industry is being met with urgent demand.
Late last month, Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft Corp. entered into an agreement to pay a large premium to Constellation Energy Corp. to source clean power from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania when it is restarted.
On Wednesday Amazon said it is investing in small nuclear reactors to meet power demands from data centres and artificial intelligence. Amazon’s announcement came two days after a similar one from Google.
On Microsoft’s announcement, Bannerman Energy Executive Chairman Brandon Munro told BNN Bloomberg in a Thursday interview it was “yet another announcement in a string of positive demand developments for nuclear power.”
“What we’ve seen is an unprecedented example in our sector of customers driving demand. But with urgency and that’s what we’ve seen with all three of these announcements, with the announcement with Constellation and Microsoft and then with Google and Amazon Web Services over the last two days,” he said.
“It’s the first time that the nuclear power sector is being led forward by urgent customer demand and in itself that will add significantly to the demand for uranium over the next five to 10 years.”
Munro added that it will take time for the Three Mile Island to become operational since the plant was shut down in 2019.
“What’s different here is because we are seeing the restart of a reactor that was most recently operating in 2019 the timeframe for that gigawatt of new nuclear power is significantly curtailed compared to what we would expect if it’s a brand new reactor that’s being constructed,” he said.
“So that brings forward demand that Constellation will have for nuclear power. Similarly with the small modular reactors that we’re seeing being supported by Amazon Web Services and Google, many commentators expected those reactors to only start to have a demand impact in the mid-2030s.”
With files from Bloomberg News and The Canadian Press.