The small modular reactor industry is in a period of “epochal change” as major industries turn to nuclear as the most direct, efficient, reliable source of energy to power everything from data centres to ships, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference has heard.

The agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, told the International Conference on SMRs at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna that “now there is a market out there” for SMRs, although he warned there is a degree of uncertainty on “whether we are going to be able to deliver on time and in the scale that is required”.

Grossi said: “We are all looking at how industries, and in particular AI [artificial intelligence] and the IT industry, the big, big firms in the world, the Googles of this world and the Microsofts of this world are now knocking at the door of nuclear.

“They are not coming to nuclear for an idea or information,” he said. They are requesting nuclear to deliver.”

Grossi said it is not only big tech that is looking to nuclear. He said he has been talking to the steel industry, the shipping industry and the coal energy companies and “they are all looking at nuclear”, particularly SMRs, which can decarbonise industries, power economies and help meet global net zero goals.

The conference follows a number of major announcements in recent weeks from technology companies that are planning to use SMRs to provide electricity for their businesses, particularly for data centre and AI operations.

Background: Big Tech’s Big SMR Deals

Amazon said it is buying a stake in US nuclear developer X-energy, as part of a collaboration with the company aimed at deploying SMRs to provide electricity to power its data centres.

Google announced that it will back the construction of seven small SMRs from Kairos Power, becoming the first tech company to commission new nuclear power plants for data centres.

In September, Microsoft announced that it would commit to buying 20 years’ supply of electricity from the mothballed US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island if Constellation Energy restarted the site.

US computer technology company Oracle wants to power a new data centre through nuclear energy, according to the firm’s chief technology officer Larry Ellison.

Speaking during a recent earnings call, Ellison confirmed the cloud computing giant has “already got building permits” for three SMRs, without giving details.

According to Grossi, SMRs are one of the most promising, exciting, and necessary developments in nuclear energy.

“A growing number of countries are turning to SMRs to power their economies and the IAEA is supporting them through our SMR platform,” he said.

“Financing will be key, and we are working to open doors, as we have seen for renewables, to ensure efficient progress.”