By Editor,Richard Marsden

Copyright dailymail

The Trent Valley was once a heartland of Britain’s coal-fired power industry. Now it could become the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley under £11 billion plans to build Britain’s first nuclear-powered data centre.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) would power the unit at Cottam, Nottinghamshire, which could open in seven years.

The move, announced last week, is separate from the SMRs planned by Rolls-Royce for the National Grid, which are set to start operating in the mid-2030s.

Data centres are vital to the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution but need a lot of energy to power them and usually huge quantities of cooling water too. Both are in short supply in the UK.

On energy, experts have questioned whether the National Grid will be able to cope with the forecast leap in demand.

One data centre training AI models can use 1.5 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power 750,000 homes, or a city the size of Birmingham. It is also nearly equal to the 1.6GW used by the 500 or so data centres already up and running in Britain. And that figure could more than double under schemes already in development.

The Government is pinning its hopes on nuclear to fill the yawning gap.

But it was warned last week that its Net Zero goals to wean Britain off fossil fuels could harm efforts to turn Britain into an AI ‘superpower’.

Jensen Huang, boss of chip giant Nvidia, said the huge amounts of energy needed for new AI infrastructure in the UK would be likely to require gas-fired power stations. However, the Government aims to be self-sufficient via SMRs.

What’s unique in the taxpayer-backed Cottam plan – which was among a raft of UK-US technology deals totalling £131 billion announced during President Trump’s state visit – is that it doesn’t need a big supply of water. A source said it ‘would use a closed loop cooling system that recirculates water’.

Until 2019, Cottam was home to one of several coal-fired power stations on the River Trent – and has been chosen for its National Grid connection.

US firm Holtec, with EDF and real estate partner Tritax Management – which will find a tenant for the data centre – aims to have reactors ‘operational’ by 2032.

Dr Rick Springman, head of Holtec’s clean energy unit, said: ‘We will help the UK seize a leadership position in advanced nuclear deployment and the AI race.’

Gareth Thomas, a UK-based director of Holtec, revealed ‘a number of SMRs’ may be built at Cottam with a ‘target’ completion date of 2032. Cottam’s SMRs, based on a design being developed for a site in Michigan, aim to produce 1.5GW, with unused electricity sold to the National Grid.

Thomas said the back-up grid connection was necessary to provide ‘resilience’ in case a ‘significant event’ disrupts the reactors.

He says the timescale is ‘dependent on the Office for Nuclear Regulation reaching agreement with America’s NRC regulator to streamline the regulatory process’ for new projects. This would ‘enable the UK regulator to grant permission to start major construction work in 2029, two years after the US regulator is expected to reach an equivalent conclusion for our project in Michigan’.

But Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan, author of a recent report on big tech’s climate impact, called SMRs ‘unproven technology’. He said: ‘Nuclear energy is notorious for going beyond the money they think they’ll spend and taking more time. The data centre may be built before reactors are ready.

‘I’m unconvinced it’s not going to affect an already congested grid.’

Prof Gina Neff, deputy head of campaign group Responsible AI, said: ‘The maths needs to be right before these facilities get built. We don’t have enough power and we don’t have enough water.’

She warned of ‘difficult trade-offs between expanding AI capacity and meeting climate goals’, adding: ‘We need to ask what the benefits are rather than taking the companies at their word.’ She said few long-term roles are created, while data centres ‘are big, ugly, noisy’ and contribute to climate change.

Concern over water consumption was highlighted in July when Anglian Water objected to a data centre in Lincolnshire – in ‘the driest part of the country’. Developer Greystoke said the site had a ‘highly water-efficient design’.

Many data centres are in the Thames Valley – one of the most water-stressed regions in the country and under hosepipe bans.

In February, the Royal Academy of Engineering warned of ‘irreparable damage’ to the environment, urging the Government to ensure firms accurately report how much energy and water data centres use, and stop them using drinking water. The Government said it recognised data centres ‘face sustainability challenges such as energy demands and water use’.