US technology giant Google announced on Monday that it plans to enter the nuclear energy business to power its data centers.

Google has signed an agreement with California-based Kairos Power to bring small modular reactors (SMRs) online by 2030, with additional reactors planned by 2035.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed, and it remains unclear whether Google will co-finance the construction of the plants or simply purchase electricity once the reactors are operational.

With this move, Google becomes the latest tech company to turn to nuclear power to meet the rising demand for electricity driven by the growth of artificial intelligence (AI).

Google’s Senior Director of Energy and Climate said during a briefing, “We believe nuclear power will play a critical role in supporting our clean growth and advancing AI. The grid needs this kind of clean, reliable energy source to support the development of these technologies.”

Big Tech goes nuclear

Other tech companies, such as Microsoft, have already invested in nuclear power.

Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, is expected to be reactivated to provide energy for Microsoft.

Kairos Power noted that the SMRs it will supply to Google are cooled by molten fluoride salts rather than water, a design the company claims is safer than conventional reactors since the coolant does not boil.

While SMRs are viewed as a game-changing technology, backed by prominent investors such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the technology is still in its early stages and lacks regulatory approval.

Data centers boost Google’s emissions

US tech companies have recently pledged to become carbon-neutral.

Although Big Tech has increasingly relied on renewable energy in recent years, the growing electricity demand from AI development has made it difficult to maintain this model.

“This agreement will add up to 500 MW of new 24/7 carbon-free power to US grids, helping more communities benefit from clean and affordable nuclear power,” Google executive Michael Terrell wrote in a blog post.

By 2023, 64% of the energy used by Google’s data centers and offices was carbon-free, but the company’s CO2 emissions still rose by 13% in one year.

Data center energy consumption remains a major contributor to Google’s rising emissions.

Thousands of unionised dockworkers at 14 major ports from Maine to Texas went on strike after midnight on Tuesday after failing to reach agreement on a new contract.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), which organised the first East Coast port strike since 1977, said in a statement on Facebook early Tuesday that it ‘shut down’ the ports at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday as workers ‘began forming picket lines at waterfront facilities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts’.

The union said the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) rejected its final offer on Monday, ‘setting the stage for the first coast-wide ILA strike in nearly 50 years’.

The USMX initiated this strike when it decided not to give up its belief that foreign-owned ocean carriers can make billions of dollars in profits in U.S. ports and not compensate American ILA dockworkers who performed the work that made them a fortune,’ said union president Harold Daggett.

Daggett added that ILA members were prepared to ‘fight as long as it takes, stay on strike as long as it takes’ to win the wages and protection from automation they deserve.

USMX said in an online statement on Monday night that it had ‘discussed counter-proposals on wages’ ahead of the strike.

Our proposal would increase wages by about 50 per cent, triple employer contributions to employee pension plans, strengthen our healthcare options and maintain existing language on automation and semi-automation,’ the statement said.

The strike appears to have put President Joe Biden in a difficult position. Under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the president has the power to intervene to prevent or end a strike and impose an 80-day cooling-off period.

But this is not the kind of move that Biden, who claims to be the ‘most pro-worker’ president in history, can make without serious backlash from unions and their supporters.

On Monday afternoon, the US Chamber of Commerce called on the president to intervene to stop the strike.

A White House official said late Monday that administration officials, including chief of staff Jeff Zients, labour secretary Julie Su and economic adviser Lael Brainard, have been in regular contact with both sides to keep negotiations moving forward.

In the case of the rail workers, the White House has previously blocked workers from striking ahead of the holiday and faced a backlash from the labour community.

JPMorgan estimates that the daily cost to the economy of a strike would be $3.8-4.5 billion. The Conference Board, on the other hand, takes a more conservative approach and puts the cost to the economy of a week-long strike at $3.7 billion.

The strike will affect around 45,000 workers, but will also have a knock-on effect on other jobs, including warehousing and transport.

Oxford Economics estimates that up to 105,000 more workers could be temporarily unemployed.

German software developer SAP, product vendor Carahsoft Technology and other companies are being investigated by US authorities for a decade-long ‘conspiracy to overcharge government agencies’.

Since at least 2022, Justice Department lawyers have been investigating whether SAP, the giant maker of accounting, human resources, supply chain and other business software used worldwide, illegally conspired with Carahsoft to fix prices on sales to the US military and other parts of the government, Bloomberg reported, citing federal court records in Baltimore.

The investigation, which has not been made public, poses a legal risk to the leading technology supplier to the US government and Germany’s most valuable company.

The investigation also extends to powerful software vendor Carahsoft, whose offices in Virginia were raided by FBI agents and military investigators on Tuesday.

Company spokeswoman Mary Lange described the raid as ‘an investigation into a company with which Carahsoft has done business in the past’. It is not clear whether the search is related to the SAP investigation. Lange and other Carahsoft representatives declined to answer detailed questions.

According to court records, the long-running investigation focuses on companies that may have rigged the market for more than $2 billion in SAP technology purchased by the US government since 2014.

Records show that prosecutors are also investigating the role of other software vendors and a unit of Accenture, a giant management and technology consulting firm. Many investigations have ended without formal charges.

Accenture spokesman Peter Soh said the subsidiary, Accenture Federal Services LLC, ‘has responded to an administrative subpoena and is cooperating with the Department of Justice’.

The Justice Department classifies bid-rigging as a form of fraud that involves an agreement between competitors on who will be the winning bidder.

It is unclear exactly when prosecutors began investigating the relationship between Walldorf, Germany-based SAP and Reston, Virginia-based Carahsoft.

But in June 2022, prosecutors sent Carahsoft a request to turn over documents and provide information about possible violations of the False Claims Act.