Clayco, an ENR top 4-ranked design-build firm based in Chicago that specializes in complex mission-critical facilities, is partnering in a multidisciplinary consortium led by Swiss-American energy company Deep Atomic to potentially create the country’s first nuclear-powered data center set to provide computing backbone for hyperscale artificial intelligence users.
Clayco is supporting consortium submissions to the U.S. Energy Dept. to develop a next generation nuclear-powered AI data center and accompanying energy infrastructure campuses. They include a proposed facility at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, that, pending department approval, could represent the first fully integrated nuclear-powered AI data center in the U.S.
«We’re partnering with [Deep Atomic], … to really think through everything from the strategy, the deployment, the constructability of the data center, [and] pre-construction analysis … really just lending support and preparation to what will hopefully be some really exciting projects,» says Ryan McGuire, president of Clayco and of its Clayco Compute division which specializes in mission-critical facilities such as data centers and other hyperscale client projects.
McGuire says Clayco is supporting the data center scope by providing early-stage delivery planning, constructability analysis and integrated design-build expertise to inform the DOE submission process. This includes how the campus could be designed, engineered and constructed, from early site development strategy through construction phasing and sequencing. The Clayco Compute division is involved in construction of 57 active data centers in the U.S. and has delivered more than $12.7-billion in mission critical facilities, offering hyperscaler clients such as Amazon and Microsoft end-to-end solutions to build such projects, he adds.
«All that accumulated knowledge is definitely beneficial,» McGuire says. «Every neutron is required in this day and age to help fill some of the gaps that all hyperscalers are going to have, and this [nuclear power] is a great solution for it.»
Microsoft has already announced another DOE project that will look to revamp and reopen the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania to power one of its data center campuses. The department has identified 16 sites on federal land across the U.S. for data center development.
Deep Atomic is advancing an integrated energy approach that pairs modern nuclear energy with AI data center infrastructure and does not require a reactor the size of those at energy generation facilities such as the undamaged former Three Mile Island unit.
«Our mission is to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear power solutions that meet the performance, reliability and sustainability needs of next-generation computing infrastructure,» says William G. J. Theron, founder and CEO of Deep Atomic. «Working with Clayco and our consortium partners, we’re presenting a proposal to the DOE that pairs practical execution planning with innovative energy and data center integration.»
McGuire says that with energy demands of modern hyperscale clients and power generation capacity of the U.S power grid to which many of these projects are being built to connect, alternative energy supply will be necessary, possibly by the end of the decade.
«There’s a big projected deficit of what the utility companies can bring, and we’ve we’ve sat down with all of our clients over the last two months, and have just been shown their new capacity projections, their new demand projections. It’s overwhelming,» he says. «It’s just continuing to really have this dramatic growth, and the only way that growth is going to be able to be realized is by providing a lot of these alternative solutions—still partnering with the utilities because they’re going to play such a huge part of it, but bringing your own power. Having your own micro-grid system has to play a part.»
