US Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Elementl Power are collaborating to advance siting of advanced nuclear projects to power data centres. The work was supported by a 2022 Department of Energy (DOE) Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher award, which provided access to the US national laboratory complex and expertise to help overcome technological and commercialisation challenges.
“This voucher allowed us to accelerate critical pre-development work that would otherwise take years to replicate on our own,” said David Faherty, Elementl co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer. “ORNL’s OR-SAGE platform gives us a data-driven foundation to screen regional siting options efficiently and allows our team to layer in our own project-specific criteria with greater speed and confidence.”
Earlier in May Elementl Power signed a strategic agreement with Google to pre-position three project sites for advanced nuclear energy. Google agreed to commit early-stage development capital to advance the projects, each of which would generate at least 600 MW of power capacity, with the option for commercial off-take once complete, and would likely be used to power large-scale data centres.
Elementl uses a proprietary, multi-criteria siting framework to assess dozens of candidate locations for advanced reactor deployment across the US with the aim of enabling faster, lower-risk project development.
Elementl will continue the evaluation of potential technology, engineering, procurement and construction activities, as well as other project partners. The company will prioritise sites for accelerated development, with an option for Google to take the commercial offtake at a later final investment decision.
