SMRs: How Rolls Royce will use Nuclear to Power AI
While AI can help to accelerate sustainability, the tech's energy and cooling demands can be bad for the environment.
Fossil fuels currently supply 56% of the energy for data centres around the world according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
Rolls Royce is looking to reduce this by powering its AI usage with nuclear energy through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
The company says it has the potential to become the UK’s highest value company, overtaking the largest firms on the London Stock Exchange.
Tufan Erginbilgic, CEO at Rolls Royce, told BBC News: "There is no private company in the world with the nuclear capability we have.
“If we are not the market leader globally, we did something wrong."
How will this project work?
The company will build its nuclear supply from SMRs, a smaller but quicker build than traditional nuclear plants.
Rolls Royce has currently signed a deal to develop three SMRs in the UK and six in the Czech Republic.
SMRs normally produces up to 300 MW of electricity and Tufan told BBC News that he estimates the world will need 400 SMRs by 2050.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reports that SMRs will be the future for nuclear power as a much more efficient and cost effective power plant than larger reactors.
Companies based in the US have already announced plans to implement this technology.
For example, Google has partnered with Kairos power and plans to bring its First SMR online by 2030.
The company says that this tech will meet new clean energy needs to unlock the full potential of AI.
How does Rolls Royce currently use AI?
Rolls Royce says it has been using AI since 1999 to predict maintenance and accurately schedule care for its jet engines on planes.
The company now uses AI robots to perform quality checks on critical components in the manufacturing centres.
It also works alongside R2 Data Labs, using data to improve performance, create customer value and build digital culture transforming how power is created.
Rolls Royce already tries to minimise its impact to the climate when using AI by investing in technology like mtu EnergetIQ which is used to determine the composition of power generation, storage and requirement.
This technology calculates the optimum energy mix needed, based on future weather data, prices of electricity and the customers energy requirement.
Jan Henker, Senior Expert Automation and Controls at Rolls-Royce, says: “If you want to achieve perfect interplay in leveraging the strengths of the different technologies, not just today, but tomorrow, next week and beyond, then what you need isn't a fixed operating strategy but one that constantly recalculates itself automatically.
“That requires an over-arching, data-driven solution – in other words, the optimiser function of mtu EnergetIQ,”
What else will Rolls Royce’s investment into SMR’s provide?
Rolls Royce says that each SMR it creates will produce enough stable, affordable and emissions free energy to power a million homes for a minimum of 60 years.
It reports that its SMRs will produce 470 MW of low carbon energy, which is equivalent to 150 onshore wind turbines.
The fleet could contribute up to US$73bn (£54bn) to the UK economy between 2025-2105.
Rolls Royce will use various areas of the UK supply chain, aiming to have 90% of the manufacturing and assembly of the SMR carried out in factories, maintaining high quality production and reducing on site disruption whilst supporting international roll out.
The production of the three SMR plants is forecasted to provide 40,000 regional UK jobs by 2050.
Tony Blair, Executive Chairman at the Institute for Global Change, says: "SMRs can be a cornerstone of the long-term, secure and low cosy decarbonised energy system that can power the future economy."
