Controversial, divisive, mercurial, tech bro Elon Musk is many things to many people. By all accounts a major influence in the newly installed US administration of Donald Trump, currently Musk also just happens to be the world’s richest man with a net worth of well over $400bn. He is also renowned as a technology pioneer. A man able to get emerging technologies from the drawing board to affordable consumer items. His success with the electric vehicle brand Tesla with its inspired choice of name is testament enough. No matter what Musk’s actual contribution to the technology was or was not, there’s no doubt that his investment and vision helped to make EVs a global viable alternative to the fossil-fuelled motor car.
Beyond the consumer sector, his Space X venture has also shown remarkable success and demonstrated a technological prowess that is the envy of many a national space programme. It’s clear then that Musk for all his faults and challenging behaviours is somehow able to bring successful outcomes to technologies characterised by high capital cost and challenging engineering.
Closer to home, Musk is investing in the AI revolution, building the xAI Colossus centre in Memphis, Tennessee. This centre features 100,000 Nvidia processing units, each of which will consume up to 1 kW. Collectively, that is enough demand to have prompted the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to specifically approve up to 150 MW of energy from its transmission grid. It’s understood that he is already planning to double the processing capacity at Colossus with obvious implications for energy demand and prompting fears that such a behemoth may even have an impact on both power prices and grid stability.
Data centres are of course notoriously power hungry and the rise of even more demanding AI services are one of the key drivers behind the projected global growth of electricity use over the coming years. It is for this reason that many of the biggest names in data are backing nuclear development. Indeed, a swathe of recent announcements points to data centres as a major influence behind the commercial roll out of small modular reactors (SMRs). Microsoft-backed TerraPower, for example, recently entered a strategic collaboration with Sabey Data Centres to explore deployment of Natrium nuclear plants. Oklo recently signed a sheaf of deals to deploy its Aurora nuclear plants for data centres. Meanwhile, Switzerland-based nuclear start-up Deep Atomic has announced plans to introduce a new SMR specifically to power data centres. Big hitters Amazon, Google and Meta have all either made investments in nuclear technology or signed agreements to explore the possibilities, largely though certainly not exclusively centred on SMRs.
Predictably enough Musk has strong views on the energy system and has made comments broadly favourable towards nuclear. He has, for example, reportedly described efforts to close and decommission operating nuclear power plants in Germany as ‘extremely crazy’. He has also publicly defended the nuclear industry’s safety record too.
However, he stands out as the only high profile player in the AI and data space not to have staked at least some claim in developing nuclear technology or securing nuclear energy supplies. Indeed, in the longer term it seems that Musk in fact favours solar energy coupled with batteries. Predictably this also ties in with another of his business ventures. His Tesla Solar outfit supplies both solar panels and Powerwall battery storage capacity and he has claimed it will soon be shipping 100 GWh of storage capacity a year.
Nonetheless, with hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank, Musk could easily pitch into nuclear development and add his talents to creating a new era of clean nuclear power. Musk is used to standing as as outsider and in some ways that is the key to his success but it’s a decision that may yet turn out to be his biggest ever blunder.
