Britain risks losing out to France on data centres, warns Nvidia

Yahoo

02-04-2025

Britain risks falling behind France in the race to build artificial intelligence (AI) data centres due to its shrinking nuclear power capacity, a top Nvidia executive has warned.
David Hogan, the micro chip company's European sales chief, said electricity supplies were now 'the biggest limiting factor' for developers of AI as they scramble to develop ever-more sophisticated software.
Supplies need to be constant and, ideally, carbon-free, he added – giving countries with large fleets of nuclear power stations a greater advantage in establishing 'sovereign' computing capabilities.
Britain has nine nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about six gigawatts, according to the World Nuclear Association. That compares to 57 reactors in France with a capacity of 63 gigawatts.
Most of Britain's nuclear plants are also set to retire by late-2020s to early-2030s, with only one new plant – Hinkley Point C in Somerset – currently under construction.
Speaking at the New Nuclear Summit in London on Wednesday, Mr Hogan said: 'What we see now, particularly in Europe, is the need to drive AI sovereignty, and that relates directly to power.
'We've gone through a phase of rapid growth in AI, but we're now moving to the next generation, which is more compute-intensive and therefore more intensive in terms of power, and that's really the biggest challenge, particularly for you, the UK, particularly for Europe.
'How do we generate power to support a growing AI? This has become the biggest limiting factor in actually growing out the capability.
'That needs to be sustainable energy and that's a real challenge for the industry.
'So those countries who make investments in nuclear, such as France etcetera, are much more well positioned than other countries.'
Mr Hogan pointed to €109bn (£84bn) worth of data centre projects announced by French president Emmanuel Macron at an AI summit in Paris last month, which were 'all based around nuclear facilities'.
He said the UK had 'an opportunity to get back in the race' but that it needed to 'have the fundamental infrastructure in place to do so'.
His comments come as a string of technology giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Google have turned to nuclear power in the US to help meet the growing power needs of their AI businesses.
This has involved either reopening mothballed nuclear power plants, as with the case of Microsoft restarting a reactor at Three Mile Island, or by backing start-ups that are developing new kinds of mini-reactors, as with Amazon's investment in X-Energy.
Nuclear energy is viewed as a good match for data centres because of its stable output, compared to unpredictable generation from wind and solar farms.
However, European governments are now seeking to roll out the red carpet to technology companies as American businesses such as ChatGPT developer OpenAI continue to make rapid advances.
In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to create 'AI growth zones' where companies can rapidly get planning permission and connections to the electricity grid.
The Prime Minister has also raised the prospect of small modular reactors (SMRs) being used to power data centres.
At Wednesday's summit in London, nuclear minister Lord Hunt told delegates: 'The Government sees the benefits of advanced nuclear-powered AI data centres and we are working hard on how to unlock this potential in the UK.
'We have watched with interest the deals and partnerships being formed in the USA.
'If SMRs are going to power the next industrial revolution in the same way coal powered the first, we are determined to make sure Britain plays a leading role in that again too.'
Meanwhile, Mr Macron has pitched France as a hub of low-cost, abundant nuclear energy to technology companies.
In Paris last month, he told them: 'Here there is no need to 'drill baby, drill', it is just 'plug baby, plug'.'
Nvidia's Mr Hogan said the typical power requirement for a data centre in Europe had gone from five megawatts to 50 megawatts in just a few years.
'If you're looking at an AI data centre of less than 50 megawatts this year, you're probably not serious,' he said.
He also claimed that 'most of the projects' currently involving Nvidia, which supplies chips and networking equipment for the facilities, were as big as 500 megawatts to one gigawatt.
A gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the output of a large power station – or enough to power around1m homes.
However, Edward Galvin, a data centre expert at consultancy DC Byte, said new nuclear power stations – large or small – were unlikely to be ready in time for much of the development coming in the next few years.
This also made it hard for countries with less nuclear capacity to catch up with the likes of France.
He said: 'Nuclear would be a great, long-term way to power data centres but the problem is the demand is coming now – and new nuclear plants tend to take at least 10 years to spin up.
'You can't turn to wind and solar either because they are too intermittent, and storage technology is not sufficient yet.
'So the way many technology companies are going to guarantee their power supplies in the short to medium term is gas-cooled turbines.
'They are relatively economic and quick to build and provide you with the certainty you need.'
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