Google and Kairos Power are set to build a small modular nuclear reactor connected to the Tennessee Valley Authority grid by the end of the decade, a major milestone for the Big Tech giant, which plans to harness nuclear power for artificial intelligence. 

The two companies revealed their collaboration with the federally owned utility on Monday morning, saying Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will generate up to 50 megawatts of power. 

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This electricity will pump into the Tennessee Valley Authority grid, which powers Google-owned data centers in Tennessee and Alabama. The deal marks the first time that a major utility in the U.S. has signed a power purchase agreement with an SMR facility like Hermes. 

“Energy security is national security, and electricity is the strategic commodity that is the building block for AI and our nation’s economic prosperity,” Don Moul, TVA President and CEO, said in a statement. 

“The world is looking for American leadership, and this first-of-a-kind agreement is the start of an innovative way of doing business,” Moul continued. “By developing a technology, a supply chain, and a delivery model that can build an industry to unleash American energy, we can attract and support companies like Google and help America win the AI race.” 

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed on Monday. 

The deployment of the Hermes 2 SMR will be the first under the historic deal made between Google and Kairos Power last fall. At the time, the companies penned the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy through a fleet of SMRs. 

The deal calls for the first reactor to come online by 2030, with additional reactors supplying upwards of 500 megawatts of power by 2035. 

Unlike traditional reactors, which use water, the Kairos reactors use a molten-salt cooling system to transport heat into a steam turbine that then generates power. 

Google and Kairos face an uphill regulatory battle to meet their ambitious timeline, as there are currently no SMRs operational in the United States and only three operational in the world. To make matters more difficult, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has only issued approvals for two SMR designs, both for developer NuScale Power. 

In November of last year, Kairos received construction permits from the NRC to move forward with the Oak Ridge facility, an indication that the nuclear company was on track to receive other crucial approvals from federal regulators, including an operating license. 

Despite little regulatory groundwork for deploying SMRs in the U.S., their development has been widely supported within both the public and private sectors. 

The Trump administration has been vocally in favor of bringing SMRs and other advanced nuclear technologies online to supply reliable and clean energy to the grid while bolstering AI advancements. 

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“The deployment of advanced nuclear reactors is essential to U.S. AI dominance and energy leadership,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. 

“The Department of Energy has assisted Kairos Power with overcoming technical, operational, and regulatory challenges as a participant in the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and DOE will continue to help accelerate the next American nuclear renaissance,” Wright continued.