Nuclear energy in Saudi Arabia can address power needs of AI

Saudi Arabia is unequivocal about its vision to develop a peaceful nuclear program to harness atomic energy for a cleaner and more sustainable future. This is the perfect time to meet the energy-hungry expansion of artificial intelligence. 

Data centers hosting AI will exponentially increase electricity demand. Saudi Arabia has the rare opportunity to develop both sectors to be mutually reinforcing, taking advantage of commonalities, all the while mitigating the impact of AI on global energy markets and the environment.

AI’s energy demands are staggering. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs analysts forecasted that AI will drive a 160 percent increase in data center power demand by 2030.  AI data center processing technology uses more than 30 times the energy of traditional task-specific software, according to a recent study by AI researcher Sasha Luccioni and colleagues. 

Not only will this AI-driven energy demand strain electrical grids, but it will also increase greenhouse gas emissions and pollution unless more green energy sources are added to the grid. 

Goldman Sach’s analysts report that data centers are responsible for almost 2 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, just behind air travel.  

The viral growth of new AI platforms like ChatGPT is just the beginning of the rapid expansion of AI. 

Data centers powering AI will become an ever-increasing climate problem unless a solution to their power demand can be deployed soon. The time to act is now.

Saudi Arabia’s peaceful nuclear program presents a promising solution to the challenge of powering the future of AI. The specific uses for atomic energy in Saudi Arabia can still be chosen and built into the program. 

The Kingdom can add both conventional large-scale nuclear power plants to its electrical grid while also fielding smaller-scale atomic energy technology tailored to address the unique demands of AI. 

Pairing data centers with nuclear energy is straightforward due to shared common infrastructure. 

Data centers and nuclear energy rely on a highly skilled workforce capable of building, operating, and maintaining electrical distribution, water purification, water cooling, and electronic control systems. Like nuclear power plants, a data center is a round-the-clock operation requiring exacting attention to detail to operate and maintain.   

Data centers and nuclear energy infrastructure share so much commonality that Amazon, Facebook, and Google have an outsized portion of their data center leadership and operations workforces comprised of experts taken from the nuclear energy industry. 

Amazon took this concept one step further by acquiring a data center co-located with the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Station in Pennsylvania, US. By doing this Amazon has taken a tangible step that recognizes that data centers and nuclear energy are complementary technologies.

This step is important as the energy demand for AI is predicted to increase over the coming years.

Leading agencies in Saudi Arabia, including the Ministry of Energy, the Communications, Space and Technology Commission, and the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority are already working on the future regulatory infrastructure for nuclear energy and AI. 

Given that nuclear energy is new to Saudi Arabia and AI is new to the world, the Kingdom is in a position to marry these technologies from the very beginning.  Regulations, research and development, and industrial policies can enable the Saudi government and private sector to develop new ideas and technologies that can power energy-hungry AI both in the country and around the world. 

The first step is developing a vision that integrates Saudi Arabia’s goal to become a world leader in AI with its nuclear energy program aspirations.

Early steps in achieving this vision can include policies integrating future data center construction with the construction of the large-scale nuclear power plants likely to be built in Saudi Arabia in the coming years. 

Demonstrating that Saudi Arabia is taking action to feed the energy needs of AI will make it an attractive location for data centers seeking to address the growing Middle East AI demand and to take advantage of its strategic location, providing low latency AI data services to both Europe and Asia. 

Recently Cushman and Wakefield ranked Riyadh and Dammam among the top 10 markets for data center growth in the EMEA region. Pairing AI data centers with green Saudi nuclear energy could power this growth even more.

Nuclear energy will make Saudi Arabia an attractive cost-effective and green option for companies looking to site their new AI data centers.

This can be done by purpose designing nuclear reactors tailor-made for the unique needs of data centers.

For example, Saudi Arabia could become a world leader in microreactors, a class of atomic reactors likened to “nuclear batteries.”  Microreactors are small, often designed to be no larger than a shipping container and able to provide power output at levels ideal for a data center. 

If Saudi Arabia develops nuclear technology that is fully integrated into AI data center design then it would be able to provide the world with a novel AI data center option that addresses the energy needs of AI in a green sustainable manner.

Regardless of how Saudi Arabia might address the energy demands of AI with nuclear energy, it is clear that the massive growth in AI and the start of the Saudi nuclear energy program are a fortunate coincidence. 

Imagine a world where AI data centers are powered by Saudi nuclear energy technology. 

Saudi Arabia’s nuclear energy program is an opportunity to power the AI-enabled world of the 21st century just as it fueled the industrial world of the 20th century. 

• Christian Williams is a Riyadh-based American defense and nuclear energy industry executive.