Morning all, it’s me again. This is Cold Isle, the only newsletter you need (if you like getting smarter about data centers.)

Here’s what’s on deck this morning:

• Going Nuclear: SMRs aim to reshape data center power ⚡

• Africa Data Centers going in on bespoke power

• Carve out artists take control of an electronics legend 🔪

• Da Bears embrace hyperconvergence for a major upgrade

• Daily Dall-E

Est. read time: 3mins 46secs

LET’S JUMP IN…

Going Nuclear: The Rise of SMRs

A new partnership including the Tennessee Valley Authority (a federally-owned utility company) has rejuvenated hopes for the use of nuclear power as a sustainable power alternative for data centers.

The deal, which is a partnership of TVA and 3 other international power conglomerates aims to develop and global deployment of a standardized small modular reactor (SMR), called the GEH BWRX-300.
Read more about the deal HERE.

SMRs have been around for a while, and they’ve been conceptualized as potential data center power sources, but this deal marks the first serious attempt to make that a reality.
The goal of the partnership is to focus intentional investment into one standardized SMR design, including the components and design standards in order to make deployment faster and costs lower.

The BWRX-300 is the 10th generation of the concept by GEH and is the first small, modular boiling reactor in the US. It uses the natural circulation of boiling water, unlike most reactors, which require active cooling via pumps.

Ontario Power Generation, one of the partners in the deal, is currently building the first grid-scale SMR at the Darlington Nuclear Site, and further deployments are being considered in Oak Ridge, TN and other sites within the TVA service area.

It’s important to note that currently data centers can only use nuclear power if they are built at an existing nuclear powerplant, and that’s not going to change in the next couple years.
Also, SMRs have been criticized for being outrageously expensive, among other logistical limitations. However, this partnership could be an early step towards nuclear being a real alternative power source for data centers and beyond.

Quick Bites 🍽️

• Owners of a large Chicago parcel are suing the city after it blocked its sale to Equinix. The owners claim the city wants the land for itself and is making it known to the market that it will block any attempt to develop the land. Equinix had planned to build a data center on the land, and the site reportedly could support up to 1.4 million sqft of development.

• “We’re thrilled to help Microsoft move towards its commitment to be carbon negative by 2030.” So says the team at Carbon Capture, the firm with which Microsoft just inked a deal to buy carbon removal credits. CarbonCapture Inc is launching a new high-tech carbon removal initiative in Montana called Project Bison.

• Toshiba is being acquired by Japanese Industrial Partners for about $15 billion. JIP is an investment firm that specializes in carve-out deals and has taken control of a number of Japanese electronics companies. The board at Toshiba wasn’t particularly thrilled with the final offer, but after selling off numerous business units to remain viable, they were forced to accept.

• Liquid Stack will use the $10 million in series B funding to open a domestic facility that will include research and development labs. Liquid Stack uses a two-phase immersion cooling process which has been adopted by the likes of NTT and Standard Power. Two-phase cooling uses non-conductive fluid to cool fully-immersed servers. This process is controversial for the chemicals used.

• Amazon is adopting diesel for its Dublin data centers. The data giant AWS will be embracing HVO, a synthetic paraffinic diesel made from vegetable oils or waste-processing with added hydrogen. They plan on rolling this out for their data centers across Europe.

Hot links 🌭

Daily Dal-E

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