Westinghouse Electric has taken a significant step forward in its quest to provide clean energy solutions for the booming Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. The company has submitted its Preliminary Safety Design Report (PSDR) for the eVinci Microreactor to the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This marks a crucial milestone in a process that began last October.
The U.S. largely abandoned nuclear energy after the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, but it is experiencing a resurgence driven by the staggering energy requirements of today’s advanced AI models. A recent study by The Washington Post and The University of California, Davis, revealed that generating a single 100-word email using ChatGPT consumes nearly a liter and a half of water and enough energy to power 14 LED light bulbs for an hour. As AI models become increasingly sophisticated and complex, their power demands are projected to rise dramatically, with AI data centers consuming megawatts to even gigawatts of electricity.
With the submission of the PSDR, Westinghouse is now cleared to deploy the eVinci for testing at the NRIC’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) facility. The NRIC is tasked with developing four experimental facilities and two large reactor test beds by 2028, where they will conduct comprehensive technology demonstrations before finalizing a pair of advanced nuclear technology experiments by 2030. “The completion of the PSDR for the eVinci test reactor is an important step towards enabling a microreactor developer to perform a test in our DOME facility,” said Brad Tomer, acting director of NRIC. “As a national DOE program and part of INL, the nation’s nuclear energy research laboratory, NRIC is committed to working with private companies such as Westinghouse to perform testing and accelerate development of advanced nuclear technologies that will provide clean energy solutions for the U.S.”
The eVinci operates “essentially as a battery,” according to Westinghouse. It features minimal moving parts, relying instead on “the first ever 12-foot nuclear-grade heat pipe” to transfer heat from the nuclear core. Besides supplying electrical power to remote locations and installations, the reactor can also generate the high-temperature heat necessary for producing hydrogen fuel. Each reactor unit is designed for continuous 24/7 operation for eight years at a time. When a reactor exhausts its fuel, Westinghouse will replace it with another sealed reactor.
Westinghouse isn’t alone in pursuing nuclear energy solutions for AI data centers. Oracle announced plans in September to power its new 1-gigawatt AI data center using three small nuclear reactors. Amazon’s AWS recently acquired a 960-megawatt data center campus from Talen, and Microsoft is currently seeking to reopen the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island to power its AI data centers. These moves underscore the growing need for reliable and sustainable energy sources to fuel the future of AI.
