A start-up company Deep Atomic has created an innovative approach to modular nuclear reactors specifically designed with the exploding data centre market in mind.
What is a SMR?
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMR’s), are small modular nuclear reactors that provide energy for a small local area or industry and generally generate power of under 300MW of power.
SMR’s are physically a fraction of the size of a conventional nuclear power reactor so that it is possible for such to be factory-assembled and transported as a unit to a location for installation and utilise nuclear fission to generate heat to produce energy.
The light water SMR’s, used in Deep Atomics designs, are ideal for data centre deployment as they have a long life-span and are highly efficient with a zero carbon footprint and seen as a top green energy form. Even the reactive fuels utilised is recycled in underground water heating facilities at the end of its energy generation life according to the Deep atomic team.
Company Funding
Up to this point, Deep Atomic has importantly been self-funded and is in the pre-seed stage with a permanent team of 11 staff and an additional 11 working on a sweat-equity basis, and come from a variety of backgrounds including engineering and data centre management that has provided a deep experience base that has brought together this project.
The next phase of development will be seeking funding for further developments and to ensure that they secure supply-chain agreements for parts and materials and establish energy supply or energy off-take agreements with data hub-scalers, as well as secure land for the trial SMR development and the production facilities.
Regulatory Compliance Benefits
Deep Atomic are in the process of raising capital to produce a proof of concept demo unit in the USA due to the existing framework provided by the Nuclear Regulation Committee (NRC) there that has an existing, well defined framework of regulations that specifies what needs to be done to get an operating licence, as opposed to other countries where one must first submit plans and have countless reviews and revisions before a licence can be issued.
Cost and Development Time Scale Savings
A key to the Deep Atomic approach will be to focus on the production and technology of the light-water reactors they plan to build, in order to deal with the major flaw in nuclear reactor developments – Time of construction and cost increase in construction that have plagued the industry.
Deep Atomic puts risk mitigation at the core of its developments, by using trusted, well-established nuclear technologies, with lots of data available in order to focus on optimization and refinement, rather than reinvention, or innovation
They plan to scale down the units and to greatly reduce the number of players involved with the production allowing them to control timelines and part suppliers better. The other innovation is that they are building an industry specific product for data centres only and this will allow them to make a product that has few if any requirements for adaption or customisation.
As their modular production of standardized, factory-built and tested modules leads to progressive cost reduction and efficiency gains with each subsequent unit built, the end product enables cost-effective scaling.
Targeted Approach Provides Optimisation
William Theron, CEO of Deep Atomic says “we have had a very target approach focussing on a single market of data centres, and developing a product knowing specifically what data centres need to solve their current problems”. “Every decision we have made has been around that” he says.
“We have looked at the customer and decided on our development from what customer’s requirements are, and have come up with a module we think will be ideal, and that is the difference between us and everyone else”, he comments.
“Data centres not only require massive amounts of energy to drive the large computer arrays but also require extensive cooling, and surplus energy from the reactors as well as the heat generated can be transferred back into power sources to run the cooling systems, making the SMR’s a particularly good solution for data centres”, says Freddie Mondale, Data Centre Specialist at Deep Atomic.
Timing is Likely to be Key
With the Data Centre market exploding in The USA, and the major tech groups all committing massive investments to developments for AI related products over the next 5-10 years, Deep Atomic’s timing, could prove to be spot-on with a planned test build expected to be online within a three-year period.
Another African business bringing local ability and talent into the global market is always welcome and there will hopefully be funders in the market who are willing to bet on a big future in SMR technology that supports the expected boom in data centre developments.
