Oracle Designs Data Center That Would Be Powered By 3 Small Nuclear Reactors

Oracle Chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison had a “bizarre” announcement to make this week.

The demand for electricity from artificial intelligence is getting so “crazy” that Oracle is looking to source its energy from next-generation nuclear technology, Ellison told investors during the company’s earnings call Monday.

“Let me say something that’s going to sound really weird,” Ellison told analysts. “You’d probably say, he says weird things all the time, so why is he saying this one? It must be really weird.”

Oracle is designing a data center that will require more than a gigawatt of electricity, the company’s president said. The data center would be powered by three small nuclear reactors, he added.

“The location and the power plant that we chose, they already have permits for three nuclear reactors,” Ellison said. “These are the small modular nuclear reactors that are going to power the data center. That’s where it gets crazy. That’s what’s happening.”

Ellison did not disclose the location of the data center or the future reactors. CNBC has reached out to Oracle for comment.

Small modular nuclear reactors are new designs that promise to accelerate the deployment of reliable, carbon-free energy as demand for electricity increases in data centers, manufacturing and the broader electrification of the economy.

Typically, these reactors are 300 megawatts or less, about a third the size of a typical reactor in the current U.S. fleet. They would be prefabricated in several pieces and then assembled on site, reducing the capital costs that have held back the construction of larger plants.

Currently, small modular reactors are a technology of the future, with nuclear industry executives generally agreeing that they will not be commercially available in the United States until the 2030s.

According to the Nuclear Energy Agency, there are currently three small modular reactors operating worldwide. Two are in China and Russia, two major geopolitical adversaries of the United States. A test reactor is also operating in Japan.