Big Tech’s Race Towards Nuclear Energy

While Nolan’s Oppenheimer painted a powerful picture of how inventions like the A-bomb can horribly go wrong and change the course of human history, the big techs, who seem unimpressed at first, are changing the narrative for better or for worse. Some of the biggest tech players, such as Google DeepMind, and OpenAI have entered the space to harness nuclear energy to mostly advance AI research, and achieve net neutral goals. 

Google DeepMind partnered with Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL, Switzerland, last year, to apply AI to create sustainable energy. By using reinforcement learning, plasma shape accuracy and containment, the key components for successful nuclear fusion, were improved. Since the development in 2022, the company has now made incremental advancements towards making the technology more usable with the plasma shape accuracy in simulation improving to 65%. As promising as that sounds, the advancement is a promising step towards implementing AI that facilitates the production of renewable energy. 

A recent research report, titled Towards practical reinforcement learning for tokamak magnetic control, talks about the research work for improving reinforcement learning used for magnetic control of Tokamaks, which is a device used for magnetic confinement of plasma in nuclear fusion experiments: plasma is used to fuse atoms to create energy in the fusion process. However, the report calls out the improvement areas in matching simulation with hardware performance, and also suggests exploring alternative model architectures such as state-space models and foundation models. 

While this advancement seems like an in-house production to contribute toward nuclear energy efforts, companies are taking the route of investing in nuclear fusion companies. 

Nuclear Energy Fixation

Nuclear energy, considered to be a safe and renewable form of energy, has seen a surge in investments by Silicon Valley billionaires in the last few years. From 2015 to 2021, investment in nuclear energy grew around 325% by volume and 3642% by dollar value. According to the International Energy Agency, renewable capacity will meet 35% of global power generation by 2025. 

The US government’s initiative towards supporting clean energy for climate change by offering tax breaks, incentives and federal funding, have encouraged tech companies to push towards investing in nuclear fusion companies. Furthermore, the Russia-Ukraine crisis has also pushed the acceleration on nuclear power startups to remove reliance on Russia. 

Big Tech Chases

Last year, Google and Chevron were part of $250 million funding for TAE Technologies, a nuclear fusion startup. The partnership between Google and TAE dates back to 2014, where the company has been providing the fusion startup with AI and computational power. 

Much before the ChatGPT rage, with his list of investments across domains, Altman had a vested interest in the field of nuclear energy in the last few years. OpenAI invested $375 million in nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy. His aim: affordable and accessible electricity with climate change. It's also possible that his goals are aligned towards powering the future of his company. Interestingly, Microsoft, which has invested in OpenAI, has agreed to buy electricity from Helion Energy in 2028. 

Helion is not the only nuclear company which Altman is interested in. Altman-led Oklo Inc that designs and deploys advanced fission power plants announced that the company will merge with AltC Acquisition Corporation where he serves as CEO and director. The company is said to raise $500 million. He even emphasised on how intelligence and energy will go hand-in-hand for a bright future.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is not far behind. He had invested in a Canadian company General Fusion, which will build a nuclear fusion facility in the UK by 2025. The project is a collaboration of General Fusion and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. 

Bill Gates, who believes that nuclear energy, if done right, “will help solve our climate goals", has founded TerraPower, an American nuclear reactor design and development engineering company. The company is planning to open a nuclear power plant in Wyoming.  

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is no stranger to nuclear power either. His VC firm, Founders Fund, made a $2 million investment in Transatomic Power, a startup that works on developing nuclear reactors that can convert nuclear waste into clean energy. He has also invested in Helion Energy. 

With big tech and billionaire investors pumping money into nuclear startups, it is possible that the nuclear energy race is running in parallel with the AGI race big techs are competing in.