Latitude Media – Nuclear startup Terrestrial Energy inks a deal to use gas as a ‘bridge’ to SMRs

The tech industry is increasingly hungry for small modular nuclear reactors to power large server farms. But the technology is still in early stages, and data centers need steady electricity faster than any nuclear developers can license, permit and build SMRs. In the meantime, the companies developing artificial intelligence are relying on fossil gas, spending billions to build out infrastructure that critics warn will lock in long-term use of a fuel with volatile prices and planet-heating pollution.

To Simon Irish, the chief executive of the reactor startup Terrestrial Energy, this choice — between waiting for new nuclear, and relying on gas today — is a false one.

On Tuesday, his North Carolina-based company plans to announce a deal with the energy services giant Ameresco to explore powering data centers, industrial plants and off-grid government facilities with gas in the short term, with the option to swap out the fossil fuel for Terrestrial’s molten salt reactors, Latitude Media has learned.

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