Amazon Internet Services Boss Says Britain Needs More Nuclear Power for AI

The boss of the world's largest cloud computing company said the UK needs more nuclear power to power the data centers needed by artificial intelligence (AI).

Retail giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to spend £800 million on new data centers in the UK over the next four years.

A data center is a warehouse full of computers that will remotely power services (such as AI, data processing, and streaming), but a single one can use the same energy as a small town.

AWS CEO Matt Garman told the BBC nuclear energy is a “excellent solution” to energy demand in data centers, which is “a great source of zero carbon, 24/7 Power”.

AWS is the world's largest purchaser of renewable energy companies and has funded more than 40 renewable solar and wind farm projects in the UK.

The 500 data centers in the UK currently consume 2.5% of all UK electricity, while 80 Hoovers in Ireland make up 21% of the country's total power, with those figures expected to reach 6% and 30% respectively by 2030.

The agency running the UK power grid estimates that data centers by 2050 will use nearly as much energy as all industrial users today.

Matt Garman said in an exclusive interview with the BBC that future energy demand is at the heart of the AWS planning process.

“This is something we planned for years,” he said.

“We invested forward. I think the world will have to build new technologies. I think nuclear is a big part of that, especially when we look at 10 years.”

French company EDF is currently building a huge new nuclear power plant in Hinkley Point, Somerset, and has decided to build another nuclear power plant in Sizewell, Suffolk. EDF's UK President Alex Chisholm unsurprisingly agreed with Mr Garman.

“Why are data center providers turning to nuclear? They will need a lot of energy,” Mr Chisholm told the BBC.

“The replication of Hinkley Cape C, along with the launch of SMR, can power the UK’s digital economy.”

SMR refers to small modular reactors whose size is the size of a football field, not the size of an entire town, such as Sizewell or Hinkley.

Amazon has partnered with SMR companies in Washington and Virginia to develop SMR and will be a natural customer of Rolls Royce, where Rolls Royce is developing its own SMR design.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy Security and Net Resources told the BBC that modular reactors “will play a particularly important role in the growing energy-hungry sectors such as AI, and we are developing planning rules to make it easier to set up nuclear power plants nationwide”

But this technology has been around for many years, and new grid connections have taken years to build.

“Investors can wait for years to connect the grid to extend growth,” said Jess Ralston of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Department.

“Cores may be a way to supply data center demand, but hardly any SMR is built anywhere in the world, traditional nuclear power is still very expensive and takes a long time to build. So it could be a while (if any) then this could be a viable solution.”

AWS estimates that 52% of businesses use AI to some extent – new businesses adopt it at a rate per minute. Mr. Gaman said that this is a good thing.

“AI is one of the most transformative technologies since the Internet. It will have a significant impact on nearly every part of our lives.”

He said he understood why many people were nervous.

“With any technology new enough, people may initially be properly afraid of it until they understand it better so that the initial response is not particularly strange.”

He added that he “would warn” international regulations.

“The speed at which this technology is developed is that I don’t believe the knowledge of people who are making these regulations will be able to keep up.

“I think the most likely scenario is that these regulations will complete the exact reversal they are trying to do.”

However, he admits he has thought a lot about the responsibility to release AI into the world.

“Whenever you build such a large part of the change technology, it’s important to consider these controls and guardrails so that it can improve society rather than damage.

“Absolutely. I'm sure about this ton.”