The world is irreversibly committed to the AI era and with it comes an insatiable appetite for information. Digital data centers feed that appetite by providing the infrastructure to collect, store and process digital information. And with software tools employing artificial intelligence (AI) technology now reaching the masses, the demand for information is accelerating exponentially.
Digital data centers are consolidated collections of computing, digital data storage, and data transmission hardware. These centers are fueled by electricity—lots of it. Modern centers such as those located in Northern Virginia, Chicago, and Silicon Valley use gigawatts of electrical power to fuel their centers and support mission-critical applications. This demand, and the commensurate need for secure, reliable electricity, is projected to double by the end of the decade.
Currently, the electricity used by data centers is provided by the national power grid. However, grid vulnerabilities due to aging grid infrastructure and targeted attacks introduce increasingly unacceptable risks to mission-critical facilities such as data centers. Their need for reliable 24/7/365 power is driving a search for sustainable baseload power from non-carbon-emitting sources, thus the renewed interest in nuclear power.
Traditionally, nuclear plant designers have focused on the safety of their plant. The trend in new plant designs is to meet established safety standards in more assured ways. Rather than rely on engineered systems that require operator action and a sustained source of electrical power to function, the new designs make extensive use of fundamental laws of nature to operate and respond to transients. In doing so, the plant naturally becomes more resilient against unanticipated upsets. A new generation of plant designs for small modular reactors (SMRs) are being developed with increased resilience to facilitate a broader utility of the nuclear plant for more diverse customers and applications. The NuScale Power Module™, a highly robust and flexible SMR design, is the first to gain regulatory approval.
The characteristic of reliability, which is vital to the operation of data centers, is generally achieved through Redundancy and resilience. A good example of how Redundancy can enhance reliability is the RAID (redundant array of independent disks) architecture that has been used for many years to improve the reliability of digital data storage. In a RAID system, data are stored in multiple locations across identical disk units to ensure access to the data even in the event of a disk failure and replacement. The Redundancy of power modules in a plant using NuScale technology provides a similar enhanced reliability—power from the nuclear plant is sustained even during the refueling of an individual module.
The attribute of resilience can be defined as “the ability to withstand and reduce the magnitude and/or duration of disruptive events, which includes the capability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and/or rapidly recover from such an event.” As such, it incorporates and adds to the attribute of safety by extending protection of workers and the general public to the protection of plant functions—ensuring that the plant’s generating capacity is not lost. Standards for achieving plant safety are well established and determined by the federal regulator; however, standards for plant resiliency are more varied and generally set by the customer. For example, resiliency requirements for power to a hospital or data center are more demanding than for power to a residential area.
NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs) incorporate qualities of both Redundancy and resilience, for example:
- Redundancy: Multiple modules operate independently with a separate reactor core, cooling system, containment vessel, and power conversion system. Other modules continue to operate when one module is shut down for refueling. In a study by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), it was concluded that incorporating a multi-module plant using NuScale technology into a dedicated microgrid system reduced from eight hours to one minute the likelihood of power interruption to ORNL’s mission-critical facilities per year.
- Resilience: The NuScale Power Module uses substantial reliance on physical laws of nature such as gravity, conduction, and convection to operate in normal and off-normal conditions. This strategy results in a simplified design with fewer engineered systems that could fail. A compelling measure of resilience through simplicity is the evaluation of the likelihood of unplanned shutdowns as a result of component failure. A detailed study of both a traditional large plant and a multimodule SMR plant using NuScale technology concluded that the SMR plant eliminated by design 70% of the potential unplanned outages. Key factors in the result are attributed to: (1) fewer and simpler systems, (2) the provision for 100% steam-turbine bypass, (3) the plant’s ability to operate in island mode, i.e., it does not require connection to a grid for safety, startup, recovery, or power production, and (4) the ability to refuel and maintain a single module while the remainder of the plant continues to produce power.
The safety features of NuScale’s technology have been verified and approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)—a first for any small modular reactor. This includes confirmation of the Triple Crown for Nuclear Plant Safety™ achieved by NuScale, which ensures that the reactors will safely shut down and self-cool indefinitely with no need for operator or computer action, AC or DC power, or addition of water—a first for light water reactor technology. Another important measure of the safety and robustness of a plant using NuScale technology is the approval by the NRC of the NuScale emergency planning zone (EPZ) sizing methodology that enables a site boundary EPZ—a substantial improvement to the current 10-mile-radius zone required for all other commercial reactors. This feature directly benefits using a NuScale technology to power dedicated co-located facilities such as data centers.
Advanced nuclear energy is gaining attention for its cutting-edge technology and robust safety features. With a site boundary EPZ, coupled with off-grid capabilities and unparalleled safety, NuScale Power is positioning itself as a leader in the clean energy revolution. In an era defined by AI, where data centers and advanced data processing are essential, NuScale's scalable, reliable, and carbon-free SMR technology offers a transformative solution for the energy landscape.
