Google’s Quiet Nuclear Energy Quest

In 2014 I went to my managers with an audacious proposal: Let’s create a nuclear energy research and development group at Google. I didn’t get laughed out of the room, maybe because Google has a storied history of supporting exploratory research. While I did not propose that Google build a nuclear lab, I felt certain that we could contribute in other ways.

I had some credibility within the company. I joined Google in 2000 as its first director of engineering, and helped make the company profitable with the pay-per-click advertising systemAdWords, in which companies bid to place ads on our search-results page. In subsequent years I got interested in energy and was part of the design team for Google’s firstenergy-efficient data center. Then, in 2009, I was recruited into Google’s effort to makerenewable energy cheaper than coal (an initiative we called RE

While that last project didn’t pan out as hoped, I learned a lot from it. AGoogle-McKinsey study conducted as part of the project drove home the point that the intermittent power sources, solar and wind, need reliable backup. Therefore, efforts to decarbonize the grid affordably depend on what happens with always-on or always-available hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power plants.

I grew up in Ontario, Canada, which achieved a climate-friendly electric grid in the 1970s by deploying nuclear power plants. It seemed to me that recent improvements in reactor designs gave nuclear plants even more potential to deeply decarbonize societies at reasonable cost, while operating safely and dealing with nuclear waste in a responsible way. In 2012, after REPandora’s Promise, in which environmentalists argued that nuclear power could help us transition away from fossil fuels while lifting people in developing countries out of poverty. I came away from this filmmaking experience with a handful of solid contacts and a determination to get Google involved in advancing nuclear.

The proposed plan for the nuclear energy R&D group (affectionately known as NERD) was based on input from similarly minded colleagues. The problems we could address were determined by who we could work with externally, as well as Google’s usual strengths: people, tools, capabilities, and reputation. I proposed a three-pronged effort consisting of immediately impactful fusion research, a long shot focusing on an “out there” goal, and innovation advocacy in Washington, D.C. Some years later, we added sponsored research into the cutting-edge field of nuclear excitation. The NERD effort, started 10 years ago, is still bearing fruit today.

These programs all came from a question that I asked anybody who would listen: What can Google do to accelerate the future of nuclear energy?

Google’s Work on Fusion

The first research effort came from a proposal by my colleagueTed Baltz, a senior Google engineer, who wanted to bring the company’s computer-science expertise to fusion experiments atTAE Technologies in…