WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) -

Alphabet's Google said on Monday it signed the

world's first corporate agreement to buy power from multiple

small modular reactors to meet electricity demand for artificial

intelligence.

The technology company's agreement with Kairos Power aims to

bring Kairos' first small modular reactor online by 2030,

followed by additional deployments through 2035.

The companies did not reveal financial details of the

agreement or where in the U.S. the plants would be built. Google

said it has agreed to buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from

six to seven reactors, which is smaller than the output of

today's nuclear reactors.

"We feel like nuclear can play an important role in helping

to meet our demand ... cleanly in a way that's more around the

clock," Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate

at Google, told reporters on a call.

Technology firms have signed several recent agreements with

nuclear power companies this year as artificial intelligence

boosts power demand for the first time in decades.

In March, Amazon.com ( AMZN ) purchased a nuclear-powered

datacenter from Talen Energy ( TLN ). Last month, Microsoft ( MSFT )

and Constellation Energy ( CEG ) signed a power deal to

help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in

Pennsylvania, the site of the worst U.S. nuclear accident in

1979.

U.S. data center power use is expected to roughly triple

between 2023 and 2030 and will require about 47 gigawatts of new

generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs estimates, which

assumed natural gas, wind and solar power would fill the gap.

Kairos will need to get full construction and design

permitting from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well

as permits from local agencies, a process that can take years.

Kairos late last year got a construction permit from the NRC

to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee.

"The NRC is ready to efficiently and appropriately review

applications for new reactors," said Scott Burnell, an NRC

spokesperson.

Small modular reactors are intended to be smaller than

today's reactors with components built in a factory, instead of

onsite, to reduce construction costs.

Critics say SMRs will be expensive because they may not be

able to achieve the economy of scale of larger plants. In

addition, they will likely produce long-lasting nuclear waste

for which the country does not yet have a final repository.

Google said by committing to a so-called order book

framework with Kairos, instead of buying one reactor at a time,

it is sending a demand signal to the market and making a

long-term investment to speed development of SMRs.

"We're confident that this novel approach is going to

improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost

and on schedule," said Mike Laufer, CEO and co-founder of

Kairos.